General Aleks Andoni summoned to the Prosecutor’s Office
Page 9 EDITORIAL By Baton HAXHIU The mafia, king of Albania If we go back a month, the police was seizing a man. Before even asking why! No one had any clear basis for what was happening. No one thought to explain to the public why this was being done. The police came out into the center of Tirana and, one after another, officials, agents, traffickers, sellers and bodyguards were gathered up, rounded up in one place. Each of them looked like the others. To the naked eye, you could say they were members of a gang. Nothing seemed to be done for them. It sounded as if the next evening their faces would be shown on TV. On the contrary, no one was revealing their names, or what crimes they were committing. An acquaintance asked me: “Are they killers, rapists, traffickers, or bodyguards? What have these people done to the public?” No one knew. It went on for three nights and three days. It was said that the state was very close. Then the detainees began to be released. So as not to call them arrests, or harsh designations, their name was “escort”. If you want to understand it, this chose the cheapest first method, with verifications in questioning. Before even asking why! Then the next day everyone was asking: but where is the mafia, if they have been flown around by plane? Maybe no one knew. The one who promised us a strong state is now presenting us with all kinds of theories about the type of mafia. Maybe when we knew nothing about the mafia we saw it better than today? Professor Vokshi said that he himself had handed over the “criminals” unconditionally. Later, countless rumors emerged that the new leaders had been handed over unconditionally, all of them. Professor Vokshi and the others were the same. So, no one is explaining to us what really happened. If today the whole day we are dealing with prisoners, the released, cars and weapons, with TV stories and police films, then the state has still not given us the fundamental answer: does the mafia exist as a structure in Albania or not? And if yes, who runs it?