Spanish police have arrested a dangerous Albanian criminal nicknamed the "escape wizard." Taulant Toma, who has managed to escape from four prisons in Italy and Belgium by cutting bars, climbing down walls with sheets tied to him, and even using a human pyramid to breach prison walls.
He was arrested after National Police officers discovered he was living in the northeastern Spanish city of Tarragona. He was the subject of a European arrest warrant issued by Italian authorities.
Before escaping from a maximum security prison in Milan eight months ago, he was serving a prison sentence that would end in 2048 for a range of crimes, including violent robbery, theft and drug trafficking, according to Italian media reports cited by Agence France-Presse.
"It sounds like something out of a movie, but sometimes reality is stranger than fiction," the National Police said in a statement that described him as a "master of escapes."
“He escaped from a prison in [the Umbrian city of] Terni in 2009, from a prison in Parma in 2013 and from a Belgian prison the same year, after using a human pyramid to scale a wall,” police said. “His latest escape, in December 2025, came after he managed to escape from a maximum security prison in Italy, after cutting through the bars and climbing out of a window under tied sheets.”
According to the statement, the "highly dangerous" fugitive was arrested in Tarragona last Friday, putting up "strong and active resistance" as officers attacked.
“The man was accompanied by a number of his compatriots who tried to stop his arrest, including a man who punched and injured two officers,” police said. Police are still searching for the attacker, but have recovered a Sig Sauer pistol that was thrown by one of the suspect’s associates.
After his arrest, the man was found in possession of forged identity documents, which revealed that he had a criminal record in the Catalan city of Girona for possession of weapons and explosives. He was also found in possession of two suspected counterfeit 500 euro banknotes, which have been sent to the Bank of Spain for investigation. The suspect was refused bail and is being held in a prison in Tarragona pending extradition to Italy. ©The Guardian, LAPSI.al
