FURGON 2000 / REPORTAGE On pages 12–13

SECRET LIST AT THE PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE On page 6

TROPOJA’S FAMOUS MAN LOCKED UP IN THE PRISON HOSPITAL Fatmir Haklaj arrested RENEA handcuffs him at midnight On page 7

INTERVIEW “What is important is that we think about how much we helped Thaçi in his work and in ours, and how much we left him to work... Mitrovica is not the only city that can set a precedent, because Shkupi is also such a model.” On page 2

COMMENT We didn’t know. We didn’t know that our squares could serve to bring people together—indeed, lots of people together—for other reasons, which are not political. On Sunday evening we learned that Albanians can all be together even if they are not brought together by the most high-profile factor, the one called politics. Until now we had been accustomed to the loud echo coming from the most important square in the whole country. On Sunday evening we heard other echoes, perhaps many times more powerful in terms of volume, but many times more human in the message conveyed by DJ Bobo and Adelina Ismajli. Skënderbej has a history all its own among Albanians; some of Europe’s best-known squares have truths close to it. Its noisy history, which began way back in 1953. The images of Enver Hoxha and other communist leaders, and later of the crowd kneeling before the great shock that “overwhelmed” it after Stalin’s death, seem to have marked the beginning of its political history. The square’s political history then continued for a long time, while its musical history—which truly held it on Sunday—had until then been no more than insignificant. A particular concert for the May Decade, or a concert by the well-known National Song and Dance Ensemble, were very little compared with the shouts of politics. The latter insisted on possessing the square. From the heights, from the 1960s, Skënderbeu, our National Hero, had also begun to occupy the square. Many people think that the bronze statue began to grow tired of politicians’ follies. Continued on page 19

On page 18 Photo: Hektor Pustina