By ERIN CALABRESE
June 12, 2008
An Albanian national who allegedly hired two goons to slash the face of his beautiful ex-girlfriend in Chinatown last month, was ordered held without bail yesterday.
At his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court, prosecutors argued that Aleksander Vacaj was a flight risk, saying he went on the lam a for a week after the May 28 attack on Artenida Gjeli.
He was arrested in the basement of a New Jersey home June 4.
Vacaj's men slashed the victim's face before an off-duty cop shot the thugs, killing one of them, authorities have said.
The ex-boyfriend "hurt her, he hurt her family, he cut her face," Assistant District Attorney Lawrence Newman said, adding that Vacaj "threatened her so that no one else would want her."
The attack has been compared to the 1986 slashing of model Marla Hanson.
But Vacaj's lawyer, Alexei Schacht, says Gjeli, "is not what she portrays herself to be."
The lawyer pointed out that Gjeli and Vacaj are co-defendants in an unrelated witness-tampering case. And he claimed the victim "has been stalking my client's current girlfriend."
