The Game with the State
BY ALFRED PEZA
The Albanian state has lost its bet with justice. It was a bet that had been circulating for days in the corridors of its offices and of the Democratic Party (PD). And yesterday, just a few minutes were enough for the Prosecutor’s most swollen case file to burst noisily. The third-instance court removed the handcuffs from all those accused in the Milot incident, allowing them to remain under house arrest while they are investigated. The hours-long confrontation on 18 February between a group of people and the police had cost PD deputy Azem Hajdari his immunity; he had been at the head of the group. The Prosecutor General called the Court of Cassation’s ruling “a decision to obstruct the uncovering of the truth about the most serious event of recent times,” followed by Minister Ceka, who said that “the Court of Cassation is a den of criminals.”
Such statements about the “Milot” case are not being heard for the first time. Since that troubled night of gunfire, when 14 people were arrested, Ceka’s claims have continued to ring out: that they were criminals, people who had fueled the fuel-smuggling trade, or that they were connected to incidents in which the Yugoslav UDB had a hand. In addition, it was insinuated that the detainees were connected to the robbery of the Tropoja bank, or to the earlier unrest in Shkodër and the terror in Gjirokastër. The Ministry of the Interior went further, issuing a warning to citizens to beware of Berisha’s former bodyguard, Izet Haxhia, who was accused of taking part in the incident, even as he was giving interviews to journalists from his home.
In the euphoria of the high-profile arrests, the state waged its battle with declarations that sounded like closing arguments, while the courts had released three of the accused, until yesterday, when they also opened the cells for the last 11. But even after this, there was another rush to continue the fight against crime through declarations. Just as Berisha once blamed the State Security Service for every failure or crime, the “Nano” government has found its alibi: “The people from the PD are to blame for every failure in justice.”
No one can believe that nine months is too little time to reform the key vertical structures of the justice system. A state—a real state—cannot fail to achieve what it wants by all legal means. The judges in black robes who delivered yesterday’s ruling knew this too. Indeed, they also knew the old proverb that one does not play games with the state. Nevertheless, yesterday the Court of Cassation decided to play games with the state as well. There is little room here for question marks. Yesterday’s ruling shows that either this state is a toy and frightens no one, or that the state itself wanted to play a game with itself. But once the state decides to enter this game, it can no longer get out.