The arrest of Kurdish leader Abdulla Öçalan in Kenya, Africa, has put Tirana police on the highest state of alert to protect the diplomatic corps in Albania. The photo shows the Greek embassy in Tirana under tight security. Öçalan’s shadow has now reached Albania too, although no protests are expected. P 5 THE ALBANIAN POLICE ARRESTED PART OF THE TERRORIST GROUP THAT HAD BEEN PREPARING AN ATTACK ON THE AMERICAN EMBASSY IN TIRANA FOR SOME TIME

Albanians being swayed by, and referring to, the statements of foreigners about what happens here is a historical fact, but if those making the statements hold American passports, everything is now taken for granted. James Traficant, congressman, and his former colleague Joseph DioGuardi signed the petition “for the release of political prisoners in Albania” at the Democratic Party headquarters two days ago, in the presence of journalists. Translated into Albanian, this now means that six former senior Democratic Party officials, arrested on 22 August last year for “crimes against humanity,” should be released. The head of the Republic’s Prosecutor’s Office immediately repeated the statement: “We have irrefutable evidence of guilt and are not influenced by politics.” Despite these statements, the petition initiated by the Democratic Party parliamentary group continues to grow as signatures are collected, seeking the release of those accused so far of causing the March ’97 unrest. This campaign is expected to succeed. That is what has happened with campaigns of this kind in Albania. The Republican Party collected over 500,000 signatures “in favor” of the death penalty; a group of Kosovo students collected even more, seeking to use these signatures to send Milošević to trial in The Hague on the same charge as “the six of the Democratic Party.” Above all, Berisha should in this case be helped by the Socialist Party’s campaign to collect 700,000 signatures for “the release of Fatos Nano from prison,” a petition also signed by several Democratic Party MPs. But neither the signatures of the “sovereign people” nor the Council of Europe resolutions compelled the “independent justice system” of the “Meksi” government to open the iron gate of Bënça and set free not merely a former senior official, but the opposition leader of that time himself. But Sali Berisha is never deterred from pursuing his own course. And in this case, he does not seem to be wrong. More than any other Albanian politician, he knows how to play the political moment and extract 100% of the gain from it. After the coup of 14 September, when Berisha’s arrest warrant was only waiting for a stamp, Ben Gilman, Chairman of the U.S. Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote to Majko that imprisoning the opposition leader would not be well received in Washington. After that came the Majko-Berisha meeting, while prosecutors’ statements came and went. Today, no one even imagines the former President behind bars. For the sake of peace in the Balkans, releasing “the six” seems like a small sweetener. The American congressmen also offered a compromise on this: the Democratic Party’s return to Parliament. Meanwhile, prosecutors in the Albanian “independent justice system” do not accept this; for the first time, some of them are whispering that “we cannot prove the charge of ‘crimes against humanity.’” Indeed, even Berisha himself could not prove this charge against Ramiz Alia.

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