Dad shot dead ‘in cold blood’ in front of family on Christmas Eve

A dad was shot dead in front of his young family on Christmas Eve “in cold blood” by a team of Swedish killers who planned the murder for six months, a court has heard.

Flamur Beqiri, 36, the brother of reality TV Real Housewives Of Cheshire star Misse Beqiri, was gunned down outside his home in Battersea, Wandsworth, at around 9pm on December 24, 2019.

The father-of-two had been out for dinner at the Colbert restaurant in Sloane Square with his wife, Debora Krasniqi.

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Southwark Crown Court heard the Swedish-Albanian national was approached from behind and repeatedly shot in front of his wife and two-year-old son in an attack caught on CCTV.

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The case is as ‘brutal as it was thoroughly shocking’

“The victim was quite deliberately killed in cold blood,” said prosecutor Mark Heywood QC.

“It happened on a quiet London street.

“A man coming back to his home with his young family was shot and killed in front of them.

“When you have seen and heard the evidence in this case, you will likely conclude that it was as brutal as it was thoroughly shocking.

“That evidence will show that it was done at very close range, the gun being fired multiple times until the target was not just put down but was beyond any hope of life.

“That, when you reflect on it, was clearly the intention not just of the man who pulled the trigger but of those behind what happened.

“The primary purpose was to kill.”

Mr Heywood said the murder had been planned for about six months, with the killers coming from Sweden before returning and recruiting a local team “to tidy up once they had gone”.

The alleged gunman, Swedish-Tunisian national Anis Hemissi, 24, is on trial, where he denies murder and possession of a self-loading pistol.

Swedish nationals Estevan Pino-Munizaga, 35, Tobias Fredrik Andersson, 32, and Bawer Karaer, 23, are said to have been part of the team “on the ground” sent to assist Hemissi.

They also deny murder.

UK national Clifford Rollox, 31, of Islington, and Dutch national Claude Isaac Castor, 21, from Sint Maarten in the Caribbean but resident in the UK, deny perverting the course of justice.

Mr Heywood said the pair were involved in “clearing up and removing the tools of the killer’s trade” at a nearby riverfront Battersea flat, where the shooter had stayed, on Christmas Day and December 27, 2019.

“These premises were quite deliberately selected for the purpose, one of many steps taken towards this event, which was not just weeks, not just a month, but many months in the planning,” he added.

Mr Heywood said the planning “became more intense” in November 2019 when Pino-Munizaga travelled to London for around 14 hours.

He allegedly rented the flat, visited Mr Beqiri’s house and bought a bicycle, which was later used by the killer to carry out reconnaissance on three days before the murder.

The prosecutor asked jurors to consider the “sheer expense and effort” that went into the planning and said they would hear “repeated reference to somebody behind the scenes, a part of the web that led to these shocking events”.

He said Karaer’s cousin, Ahmet Karaer, had a hand in the “planning, money movement and most probably in the giving of instructions”, helped by his partner and the mother of his children, Azadeh Etesamipour.

Neither are on trial, which continues on Wednesday.