A British fugitive has been arrested for allegedly shooting dead a Serbian gangster at an illegal party on the Costa del Sol.
The unnamed 43-year-old man, who police say was previously implicated in an attempted murder case in the UK, was found in the UAE after an international arrest warning over the killing in August.
According to the Spanish National Police, the 36-year-old victim had attended the party along with other revellers after an evening spent at a nightclub in Marbella.
They were invited to continue partying at a villa in El Paraíso, an upscale residential area in the resort town of Estepona.
At the house, the British suspect met the Serbian man and an altercation broke out, although it is unclear what provoked the dispute.
As the victim walked away from the clash, the suspect shot him “several times in the back”, police said.
He was dead before emergency services arrived at the scene.
The police said in a statement: “The consumption of drugs and alcohol was the trigger for the clash between the parties.”
Investigators discovered that the victim’s Belgian passport was fake and that he was on the run from Serbia, where he was wanted over his alleged links to Balkan criminal organisations.
The British suspect is now in prison in the UAE, awaiting extradition to Spain, where he will face a judicial investigation and a probable murder charge.
The UAE, and Dubai in particular, has been accused of being a safe haven for foreign fugitives due to the difficulty in extraditing wanted criminals from the Gulf state.
The organiser of the party, a Cuban who’s linked to a series of high-end property occupations in the area, was well known to the police because of previous complaints by neighbours of public disorder and drug-taking at past parties held there.
He has been expelled from Spain for five years. Police said he is currently residing in the Czech Republic after applying for asylum to avoid being repatriated to Cuba.
