Inside the Albanian drug machine as 24 Hours in Police Custody shows how gangs turn high streets into ‘industrial’ farms
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IT was a night of violence that led to the daring escape of 40 detainees from one of the country’s top immigration detention centres. But the April 2023 breakout from Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire exposed not just the weakness of the facilty itself, but also shed a light on the massive network of drug and people smuggling set up by Albanian mafia-style gangs across the country.
![[Yarl's Wood immigration centre in Bedfordshire is one of the UK's largest detention facilities]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/evacuated-buildings-number-refugees-believed-545443380.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre houses more than 400 people, many destined for deportation. After a protest spiralled out of control, some of the inmates blocked the view of the centre’s cameras and began breaking down the fence. Using the centre’s gym equipment, the men were able to force themselves out of the building.
![[Albanian gangs have taken over the UK's cannabis industry, growing industrial quantities of the plant for a multi-billion pound market]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/f0n2j2-propagated-cannabis-plants-discovered-961931481.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
While most were apprehended immediately, eight were able to evade capture and disappear into the murky network set up by gangs across the country, as revealed in the upcoming Channel 4 documentary 24 Hours in Police Custody. CCTV from a nearby farm showed a group of hooded men trespassing across fields to spend the night in an outbuilding.
![[Footage from the night of the breakout shows the four detainees forcing their way through the fence]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/yarls-wood-immigration-removal-centre-961930859.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
The next day, the trio was picked up from a golf club carpark by a taxi. Police were able to track the taxi to Bedford, and identified the owner of the card that was used to pay the fare. It was paid for by Vasile Koraque - a man known to police because of the involvement of his two brothers in a large-scale cannabis operation.
![[Gangs with cannabis operations are often run as a business - with people at the bottom of the hierarchy farming the plants full-time]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/bgr7ea-marijuana-home-grown-house-961931357.jpg?strip=all&w=638)
