Spain’s National Police have arrested Taulant Toma, a 42-year-old Albanian known by the nickname the “Master of Escapes,” in Tarragona.
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The arrest took place on Friday in the Campclar neighborhood after around six officers spent several days monitoring his movements. Investigators managed to identify him by his physical features, mainly his tattoos and a deep scar on his right cheek.
According to the authorities, Toma had entered Spain in January and was using forged documents. He had previously managed to escape from four different prisons, three in Italy and one in Belgium.
During the police operation, the 42-year-old resisted arrest. A person accompanying him threw a Sig Sauer pistol into some bushes, where it was later found by Catalan police.
Toma’s first escape dates back to 2009. At the time, he was 25 years old and was serving a sentence for armed robbery at a prison in Terni, Italy. He slipped through an opening in the prison yard fence and scaled the wall using bedsheets.
On February 2, 2013, four years after the first incident, Toma also escaped from a prison in Parma. Together with a fellow Albanian who was also his cellmate, he cut through the bars and then used bedsheets to scale the perimeter wall.
In September of the same year, the Albanian was arrested in Belgium, but he also managed to escape from prison there. On December 14, 2013, his accomplices took an officer hostage at Lantin Prison and caused chaos in the yard. Using a “human pyramid,” Toma scaled the wall and fled in a vehicle waiting outside.
He was arrested again in 2015 and was extradited to Italy in 2019.
His fourth and most recent escape occurred in December 2025 from the high-security Opera Prison in Milan. In that case as well, Toma used improvised tools to cut through the bars, bedsheets to climb down the wall, and a makeshift pole to get past the barriers.
Toma is currently being held at Mas d’Enric Prison in Spain. The National Court has begun proceedings to extradite him to Italy, where he faces a lengthy prison sentence.
Meanwhile, Spanish police are also searching for one of Toma’s accomplices, who is suspected of attacking officers during the arrest operation.
