The companies escape trial. Creditors searching for the President. IMF sets conditions OSCE extends its mandate. Italians leave Albania. Berisha sets the table The companies escape trial. Creditors searching for the President. IMF sets conditions Meksi: I’ll meet the PD trash in court OSCE extends its mandate. Italians leave Albania. Berisha sets the table

Albania continues to remain in the clutches of crime. Criminals are sending innocent lives to the grave. The statistics add to the figures every day. More than 2,000 lives buried in these mad times accuse the criminals, whom justice is not bringing to the dock. The lives of Albanians are still at risk. Albanians, good and bad, angels or devils, are armed like nowhere else on the face of the earth. Under these circumstances, repealing the death-penalty law is more than a paradox, not to say madness. Not only now, when crime is out in the open, but even in calmer times the Republicans have insisted, in their conservative program, that the death-penalty law should not be suspended. Whoever summons death has no right to live. Whoever kills, rapes, kidnaps or traffics children, according to the Republican program, deserves no mercy. It is too soon for Albania to apply Europe’s prescriptions for repealing the death-penalty law; on the contrary, this is the time when Albanian justice must “get to grips” with crime. Without a forceful crackdown, criminals will find it easy to roam about as if in their own meadows. Criminals are on the loose; to tolerate them at this moment means tolerating death and denying life. It is easy for Europe to issue recommendations, but how well can they know the psychology of Albanian criminals, or perhaps the true scale of the spread of crime in Albania? If justice blindly follows Europe’s recommendation, if the Albanian Parliament mechanically raises its cards in favour of abolishing the law for Europe’s sake, we would gain nothing except opening the floodgates to traditional Albanian vigilantism. There have been many cases during these eight tragic months when vigilantes have executed someone, invoking tradition and the unwritten laws in the codes of Albanian justice. If last year the PD Parliament suspended the death-penalty law, Albania was experiencing different times. Those were times when crime was not dancing the dance of death as it is now. Conditions have changed; Albanians are closer to death than to life. For now, calm and order cannot be established by “re-sentencing” criminals. A firm stance and the rigorous application of the death penalty would reassure Albanians. This is the Republicans’ conservative philosophy. If Albanian politicians promote Europe’s recommendation, they will make a fatal mistake and add to the tears of Albanians.

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Page 2 Illustration: a television set bearing the inscription “tvsh”; people holding flags with the letters “PS” and “PD”. © M. Suli

Page 13 Two are killed and the jeweler’s son is kidnapped in Vlora; father, mother and daughter are burned in their sleep; girls are killed in Dibër; criminals go free in Berat; two women rob a thief in Elbasan; thieves attack emigrants in Kapshticë; three Albanians kill their compatriot in a Milan hospital. Pages 5–7

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“Siva” publishes the creditors’ contracts that will be paid from August 11 through 16. Pages 11–12

“REPUBLIKA”, Sami Frashëri Street, near “Petro Nini Luarasi” High School, Tirana, Account No. 986/110, Tirana Commercial Bank. Tel/Fax 259 88 Tel. 230 90