Yesterday morning, the most serious incident in the attack by political power against the independence of the courts "When the president of the Court of Cassation is mistreated by the police, when the dignity of a judge ends up in the hands of a policeman who strikes him, when employees of that court are taken by force to the police, do you think the freedom of the Albanian citizen is guaranteed? I would not want to be in Berisha’s place in Washington facing President Clinton. Judge for yourselves Berisha’s position when he speaks about human rights in Albania, when he speaks about the independence of the courts. I am convinced that President Clinton will not be deceived." Pages 2-3

Everything that happened yesterday morning at the gate of the Court of Cassation cannot be explained by the logic of democracy. The police encirclement of a central institution of Albanian justice and the brutal treatment of its representatives is both a disgrace to democracy and an expression of the serious dangers threatening it. The statement of the Ministry of the Interior not only explains nothing, but with its absurdity it arouses fear. It arouses fear because some segments of power in today’s Albania are so servile to orders coming from above that they seek no legal backing for their arbitrary actions. The violation of democratic values is the threshold of the installation of totalitarianism. The scenario played out yesterday at the Court of Cassation, that is, the further escalation of political life, already highly tense as it is, serves certain immediate and long-term plans of the leaders of political power in the country. They want to create the impression, as they have also proclaimed, that with a president of the Court of Cassation who supposedly was an executor of genocide and with several employees of this court who supposedly infiltrated there from the former State Security, democracy is supposedly in danger. It is the application of the well-known fable, "The thief cries: catch the thief." The truth is entirely different. All the facts convince us that the Court of Cassation, this high temple of Albanian justice, has taken with complete seriousness the carrying through to the end of the one [?] effort that has blocked democracy in Albania: the release of Fatos Nano. This terrifies the rulers, in whose hands the file against Nano has been left, and it burns them. Nano, the leader of the Albanian socialists, not only emerged unstained from all the stew cooked in the kitchens of the PD, but through his firm stance and the vision of a European democrat he has reduced to dust and ashes all the scenarios that have been played and are being played in the backrooms of Albanian politics in order to present the Socialist opposition as the greatest danger to the democracy we are building. Even the moment when this police coup against the Court of Cassation and its members was staged shows that the authors are far too preoccupied with seeking, even through this, the independence that the highest court, by presenting the situation in the country and the fragile democracy we want to build as being in safe hands. The security vision that is sought to be created especially in international bodies and chancelleries reveals even more the panic that has seized those in power. Should this be the backdrop of the long-awaited visit that the President of the Republic will soon make to Washington? Certainly not. Before Berisha receives a lesson in democracy in the most advanced democratic country in the world, he should take care to secure these freedoms and rights, those values that the world today has made a way of life, in order to show that he knows how to value them. He has not succeeded in achieving this either for himself as a person or for his party. Yesterday’s event is more than a disgrace.

Press statement by the international secretary of the Social Democratic Party of Austria, Dr. Karl Schraneck The Albanian government’s fight against corruption cannot be misused to fight the political opposition. The recent political developments in Albania, especially in the case of the former prime minister and chairman of the Socialist Party of Albania, Fatos Nano, give a poor outlook for the way democracy is understood in the ruling circles of politics in Albania. Through the recent changes made to the legislation, the aim is to make it impossible to free him during the review of this case by the Court of Cassation. This is not in line with the principles of a democratic state. These developments in the Nano case remind us of the political trials of the earlier communist period. Albania has also had dangers of this kind of development before. The way the government reacts to the Nano case makes us understand a step backward, and this is a bad sign for all those political forces and the Council of Europe that worked for Albania’s admission to the Council of Europe. In this context, Schraneck hopes for a démarche by the leading troika of the European Union so that this "bad joke" may end in a proper way [?]. Foreign Relations Office of the Social Democratic Party of Austria

A draw worth a victory Page 12