Six months before he was found dead on the Bibby Stockholm barge, Leonard Farruku had hopes of building a new life in Britain.
“I’ve been in the UK since August 2022. Hopefully I can get my papers because now I’m in [a facility for] asylum seekers. I came on a rubber boat,” the young Albanian said in an Instagram message to an old primary school friend in Tirana, his home country’s capital.
His mother had died when he was 17 and his father a few years later. “Losing my mother and father very suddenly traumatised me. I didn’t know where I was or what was happening. I’m seeking asylum now. I live in a hotel. I hope God will protect us,” he wrote.
Farruku, 27, is thought to have killed himself in a shower room on the controversial barge, which houses hundreds of asylum seekers off Britain’s south coast, on 12 December last year. He had appeared to be in a state of distress shortly before he was found dead.
His family and friends still have questions about what drove Farruku, formerly an ambitious and gifted accordion player with a seemingly promising future, to take his own life.
“We will miss Leonard a lot. We will be forever heartbroken for the way he gave an end to his life,” his sister Jola Dushku, 33, who lives in Lombardy, Italy, said.
“He was a lovely person who came to the UK to build a new life full of hope. He fulfilled what the Home Office asked him to do, going on the Bibby Stockholm. We never ever will have peace in our minds until the moment we find the truth about the circumstances inside that barge that contributed for our brother to commit suicide.”
The Guardian has spoken to relatives, friends, neighbours, colleagues and teachers in Albania, in an attempt to understand more about Farruku’s background and the experiences that led up to his death.
They described him as a kind and hard-working man who dreamed of becoming a musician – but was rocked by his mother’s sudden death. She had a heart attack in her sleep in May 2013, when Farruku was a teenage pupil at Liceu Artistik Jordan Misja, a well-respected arts school in Tirana. His father died of a heart attack five years later.
It was then that Farruku, who was affectionately known as Nardi, began dreaming of securing work and building a new life in the UK. He made the dangerous journey across the Channel in 2022, a year when a record 12,301 Albanians arrived on small boats, and claimed asylum.
He has now become the face of concerns surrounding the barge since it was docked at Portland, Dorset, in July.
His family’s grief has been compounded by reports that Farruku was unaware that he had been granted permission to work in the days before his death and that his body lay undiscovered for up to 12 hours.
Speaking from a cafe in Allias, a poor neighbourhood in Tirana where Farruku lived for more than a decade, Agron Farruku, his uncle, relayed the family’s heartbreak.
“Leonard wanted to be in the UK legally to work there. He had ambitions. He wanted to work, make money, buy a house, start a family, to have a normal life. If he had had his work documents, he would’ve been able to get a job,” he said.
The 57-year-old singer said Farruku had no known mental health problems, adding: “His death has destroyed us. But the worst part is that we don’t know why or what happened. We don’t know the truth. How was he forgotten for up to 12 hours in a state-regulated facility?
“He told his sister the conditions on the barge were OK but that they were treated very badly. He said he wanted more freedom, he wanted to go out a bit more, but the officials didn’t allow it. He complained that they were treated as criminals.”
Born on 29 January 1996, Farruku was raised in Vorë, a town on the outskirts of Tirana, by his mother, Shkëndije, a housewife, and his father, Petrit, a clarinet player who was well known in the area for performing at weddings. His two older sisters, Marsida and Jola, now live in Italy.
His cousin, Andi, who did not want to give his surname, recalled a happy childhood in Vorë, with the pair playing football and travelling together by bus to Tirana three times a week for private accordion lessons.
“It was a beautiful time,” said the 29-year-old photographer. “It was his father who wanted him to be a musician and Nardi was very talented; he had an ear for music. It was his life, he studied for three or four hours a day. We were 13 and 14 when we started to play at weddings with our fathers.”
But the family is thought to have faced financial difficulties after moving in 2009 to Tirana, where Farruku attended Bajram Curri primary school for two years. The Farrukus lived round the corner from the school in a leaky one-bedroom top-floor flat in a prefabricated block.
Lindita Fejzo, Farruku’s literature and language teacher, said Petrit took a keen interest in his son’s education and attended parents’ evenings. “Leonard was a kind and sincere student. He was passionate about music and sport. He was average in other subjects but was very ambitious and a bit of a dreamer,” she said.
From there, Farruku auditioned for Jordan Misja, the arts school, which he attended from 2011 to 2015. His teachers described him as a well-behaved student who excelled at the accordion. Students across Albania are graded from four to 10, and Farruku would typically achieve nines and 10s in the accordion.
His teacher, Dritan Baftjari, said: “He never gave us any problems. He was calm and not an attention seeker.”
Valbona Kotepano, the head of department, added: “Leonard was a very talented and good student. But in his last year he slowed down and appeared distracted, this was after his mother died. His grades became worse, and he started getting sixes. He was not studying, he was not focused any more. He was often absent.”
His school friends Ervin Telo and Ariel Koka, both 28, recalled Farruku’s struggles. “He had no motivation. After his mother died, he was very sad like: ‘I have nothing any more.’ It was like he lost his purpose in life,” said Koka, who works at Albania’s ministry of culture.
The pair bumped into Farruku in Tirana in recent years and learned of his financial problems and dreams of moving abroad. Farruku, who had started working as a delivery driver in school, had by now become a courier for a pharmaceutical company. He later joined the pizza chain Proper Pizza, earning the minimum wage.
Telo, a guitarist, said: “He told me he was planning to go abroad due to the economy and the difficulties he was facing. He said: ‘I don’t know but maybe England or somewhere because I speak a bit of English.’
“He said: ‘I’m broke.’ I asked him what are you doing with your life and he said: ‘I’m doing shit with my life.’”
When Koka bumped into Farruku in 2020, he was repaying a payday loan company.
Urim Aliaj, one of Farruku’s closest friends who went to primary school with him, said Farruku ended up selling his beloved accordion and his mobile phone after graduating to make ends meet.
The 27-year-old actor said: “His relationship with his father deteriorated after his mum died and he desperately needed money and a job. He told me his father had developed an alcohol problem.”
Bardhyl Rapo, 70, who lived in the same block as the family, added: “Nardi was a wonderful boy. When his mother died, Petrit [his father] started to drink a little bit because he was very sad and was having some fights with his son.”
Aliaj said that Farruku saw his friends less frequently after his father’s death in 2018. “Life was hard on him. He seemed very disillusioned,” he said. “He had been a practising Muslim, praying and going to the mosque, but I noticed he got tattoos which are forbidden in Islam.” One was dedicated to his mother, with whom Farruku shared a birthday.
After his father’s death, Farruku spent time with his sisters in Italy and tried to get a job there but it did not work out. Both Aliaj and Andi said Farruku then seemed set on moving to the UK, where he had cousins.
“He wanted to go to the UK but because it’s very difficult, seeking asylum was the way he understood it could happen and he could have permission to work, but I don’t know of any real reason for him to seek asylum,” Andi said.
The basis of Farruku’s asylum claim is not known and his application was being considered by the Home Office at the time of his death.
Aliaj did not know if Farruku had made it until Farruku messaged him from a new Instagram account on 17 June last year to say he had been in the UK since August 2022, having arrived on a “gomone”, the Albanian word for rubber dinghy.
Aliaj said: “Nardi had it really hard in life, but he was always looking for the light, for something brighter. That’s why it’s difficult for me to believe he committed suicide. Our main wish is to find the truth.”
Farruku’s loved ones will now have to wait for the inquest into his death in the hope their questions will be answered.
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
