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Macedonian Police Arrests Escaped Terrorism Convict

03 09 2007  Skopje _ A special police unit arrested the escaped terrorism convict Xhemail Iseini, alias Commander Jamie Shea, early on Saturday in a raid in his house in the north-eastern village of Lojane, near Kumanovo.

Iseini escaped from Idrizovo prison near Skopje on August 19 during the funeral of his mother in Lojane, when he used a leave of absence to flee. He was serving a seven-year sentence for terrorism - for bombing the Skopje-Belgrade railway and planting a bomb in the centre of Kumanovo.

According to police, Iseini did not resist re-arrest. During the raid they found one grenade launcher with ammunition and filed a fresh suit for escaping from prison and for illegal possession of weapons.

The government earlier removed the director of Idrizovo prison, accusing him of faulty judgement for granting Iseini leave of absence with only two guards to accompany him.

During the 2001armed conflict in Macedonia that ended with the signing of a peace accord later same year, Iseini was a local commander of ethnic Albanian guerrilla fighting Macedonian forces. It was then that he adopted as his alias the name of the then NATO spokesman, Jamie Shea.

In September 2003 Iseini was identified as one of the key people responsible for the crisis in the Kumanovo-Lipkovo region, where so-called Albanian National Army, ANA, was threatening to reignite the ethnic conflict in Macedonia. Iseini surrendered to KFOR in Kosovo in December 2003 and was extradited to Macedonia in 2004, where he had already been sentenced “in absentia”.