Albanian criminal Thoma Taulant, who broke out of four European prisons, has been arrested in Tarragona, northeastern Spain, under an Italian warrant, police reported.
The 58-year-old fugitive, dubbed the escape wizard by Italian media, was taken into custody following an eight-month search after his escape from a maximum-security prison in Milan. At the time of his getaway, he was serving a sentence for armed robbery, theft, and drug trafficking, with his release scheduled for 2048.
According to reports by The Guardian, authorities arrested Taulant in Tarragona, a Mediterranean port city in the Catalonia region of northeastern Spain. Italian officials had issued an international arrest warrant demanding his return to serve the remaining decades of his prison term.
Violent clash during arrest
Police officers encountered immediate resistance when moving to detain Taulant on Friday, August 28. His companions actively tried to prevent the arrest, resulting in a violent confrontation with law enforcement officers at the scene.
During the scuffle, one of Taulant's associates managed to injure two police officers. Law enforcement personnel eventually restrained the group and seized a handgun from the accomplices.
A search of Taulant revealed that he was carrying falsified identity papers. Further checks confirmed that he had a prior criminal conviction in Girona, a city in northern Catalonia near the French border, for illegal possession of weapons and explosives. Officers also discovered two suspected counterfeit 500-euro banknotes in his possession.
The 500-euro note was officially phased out of production by the European Central Bank in 2019 to reduce money laundering, counterfeiting, and illegal transactions across European Union member states.
History of prison escapes
Taulant earned the Italian moniker mago della fuga, or escape wizard, through a series of jailbreaks across Europe. His first recorded escape took place in 2009, when he broke out of a prison in Terni, a city in the central Italian region of Umbria.
Four years later, in 2013, Taulant escaped from another penal institution in Parma, a city located in northern Italy's Emilia-Romagna region. During that same year, he succeeded in breaking out of a prison in Belgium by scaling an exterior wall with the help of a human pyramid formed by fellow inmates.
His fourth escape occurred in December 2025 at a maximum-security prison in Milan, the principal economic center of northern Italy. Taulant sawed through the metal bars of his cell window and descended the outer facility wall using tied bedsheets.
Italy's high-security prisons maintain strict security measures for inmates serving long sentences for serious violent crimes, armed theft, and narcotics distribution. Despite these security protocols, fugitives who cross international borders are pursued through coordinated intelligence sharing among European police forces.
Other major prison breaches
The arrest of Taulant comes alongside other notable reports of complex prison breaches. In the United States, a former Louisiana parish sheriff was recently accused of involvement in a famous mass jailbreak from a detention center in New Orleans.
In that May 2025 incident, inmates secretly created an opening behind a toilet inside a cell to access the outdoor yard. The prisoners then covered a perimeter fence of razor wire with blankets before climbing over to escape from custody.
