“Zhuli did not desert”
The Prosecutor General states: “The former minister has no file with us” “In his position as former head of Defense, he was a civilian. As such, he cannot be accused of desertion”
BY LAW? Arbnoni, a victim of politics TIRANA. He arrived yesterday afternoon from Athens. 13 hours after landing at the airport, he appeared at the General Prosecutor’s Office, accompanied by his lawyer, Sokol Hazizaj. He testified for about an hour and a half before the investigative group handling the events of early March. “Former Prosecutor General Arben Rakipi has been inconsistent with me in his public statements. Likewise, so has that investigative group, which in his name brings accusations against me. I did not leave Albania to evade criminal prosecution, but because my life was in danger. I left temporarily when the state had collapsed,” the former Minister of Defense, Safet Zhulali, declared yesterday before journalists. Thus, after 6 months he has returned to marriage in Albania, where on March 4, after issuing the order for air strikes in the south, he first left for Italy and then for Greece, where he stayed as a political asylum seeker. During this period he and his wife moved several times to different European countries. Zhulali is expected to testify again in the prosecutor’s office today, while it is still unknown whether he will be arrested by the police. TIRANA. Safet Zhulali, former Minister of Defense, has denied involvement in the suppression of anti-Communist protests in Albania, as well as the accusation of desertion. Both accusations have also been dismissed by Prosecutor General Arben Rakipi, according to whom Zhulali was questioned yesterday as a person under investigation. He further confirmed that after the questioning, no security measure was taken against him. “He is considered a person under investigation only for the period when he was Minister of Defense and not for his departure from Albania. There is no file for desertion, because he was not a military man, but a civilian,” Arben Rakipi explained yesterday to the newspaper "Shqiptare". Sokol Hazizaj, Zhulali’s lawyer, stated that his client was questioned about the events of March, mainly about the order to drop bombs in the South, about his movements after March 4, and the reasons why he left Albania. Hazizaj added that the investigators asked questions about Zhulali’s relations with former President Berisha and with several other leaders of the PD. The prosecutor’s office did not wish to give further comments. [partial text, unreadable in the small columns]
Chief Prosecutor Arben Rakipi; Safet Zhulali