The Spanish newspaper La Nación reported on August 26 that a long-term manhunt across several European countries had finally come to an end. The Spanish police had successfully captured a foreign fugitive with a record of four prison escapes. This man had repeatedly escaped from multiple prisons in Italy and Belgium in succession, using various prison methods and extremely well-planned escapes. He was known as a “escape master” by the outside world, and his bizarre prison escape experiences could rival film and television plots.
The National newspaper reported that this “extremely dangerous” fugitive was arrested last Friday in the city of Tarragona in the Catalan region of Spain. The Spanish national police released a bulletin on the 26th saying that the suspect resisted violently at the scene of the arrest, and the police finally succeeded in subduing him. Due to the large crowd surrounding the arrest process, police officers quickly evacuated after handcuffing and controlling the suspect to avoid safety risks at the scene. According to investigators, the fugitive has been hiding in Spain since January this year.
This arrest operation was not an impromptu initiative. The Spanish police had launched a long-term pursuit of the fugitive and deployed special surveillance for several days. According to reports, about six police officers conducted surveillance operations for several days for this purpose. On the day of the incident, when the six officers on duty were about to end their shift to evacuate, they accidentally discovered the suspect traveling in a car. When arrested, the suspect held forged identity documents made with extremely lifelike craftsmanship, trying to deceive the authorities. “The documents were made very lifelike, but we had already grasped all his physical characteristics, including a very prominent tattoo and a deep scar on his right cheek, so we were very certain it was him,” said a city official in Tarragona.
The suspect has a deep scar on his cheek. Image: Foreign media.
Although the Spanish police have yet to disclose the suspect‘s full name, only labeling him with the initials “TT”. However, it has been confirmed by the British Guardian, the Italian news agency and other media that the suspect is an Albanian man named Taurant Toma, born on June 9, 1984. He has been imprisoned for multiple felonies including violent robbery, theft, and drug trafficking, serving his sentence until 2048. Toma is known as the “escape master” because of his bizarre experiences of four successful escapes. The Spanish police also said: “This sounds like a movie, but sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.”
Public sources show that Thomas‘s four prison escapes spanned more than a decade, each using different means of escape. Thomas‘s first escape occurred in 2009, when he was incarcerated in the Italian prison of Tirni. Thomas successfully escaped through a gap in the prison fence while his fellow prisoners were playing football in the courtyard, and was caught by the police two months later. In February 2013, he escaped again, this time from the prison in the northern Italian city of Parma. Thomas joined forces with his fellow prisoners to saw through the bars of his cell, landing on the ground using knotted bedsheets, and using broom handles wrapped with tape to make a simple tool to scale the 8-meter-high prison wall. This escape lasted for seven months, and he was finally caught in Belgium.
However, Thomas, who was in a Belgian prison, successfully escaped once again. In December 2013, he and several other prisoners kidnapped prison staff as hostages while creating chaos by blowing up glass containers to distract prison guards. At the same time, the prisoners set up a “human ladder” to help Thomas climb over the fence, and there were even cars waiting outside. The most recent escape occurred on December 7, 2025, at the Milan Opera Prison, Italy‘s highest-security prison. According to the Italian Giornale, in order to successfully escape, Thomas adopted extreme dietary control methods to lose weight and lose weight, and finally managed to squeeze through the only centimeter-wide gaps after sawing through the iron bars.
The Guardian reported that Thomas was previously wanted by Italy through a European arrest warrant. The judge has ordered that the suspect cannot be released on bail. Currently, he is being held in a prison in Tarragona, awaiting extradition to Italy to continue serving his sentence, and facing additional jailbreak charges.
Many media commentators said that Thomas‘s multiple successful escapes from prison exposed the chronic overcrowding and insufficient police force in European multinational prisons. In April this year, the Belgian news agency reported that due to insufficient living space, 763 prisoners across the country slept on mattresses spread on the floor, a record number.