The Proud Spy

by Teuta Mema


Making public the Communist Secret Police archives is a moral necessity. The documentation of anti-human activity which took the lives of thousands of innocent Albanians must be entirely exposed. It is the right of all the people persecuted by the Communist Regime to learn the truth. The same significance is in the political realm; to consolidate a new democracy it is absolutely necessary to expose the identities of the spies of the Communist State Security – who, easily blackmailed, can work against the interests of the country.

In an interview with the Voice of America, Remzi Lani, Executive Director of the Albanian Media Institute said, “We came to Washington, invited by the State Department, for a visit organized by the American Embassy in Tirana for meetings with American institutions: the Department of State and the National Security Council, about… the image of Albania in the world.”

The question arises to any decent Albanian: What could Remzi Lani have said to the State Department or the National Security Council that they did not already know? Might he have said that his Communist State Security bosses had sent him to convince the American high officials to ignore communist crimes? Or did he confess that he, himself, as a Communist State Security spy, soils the image of Albania in the world?It is unknown what Remzi Lani said in Washington, but we now know what the former political prisoner, anti-communist writer, Dode Bajraktari, had said during an interview with the journalist, Anila Dodaj.

“I have had a terrible life in the communist prison; it cannot be put into words. Even now, I still cannot believe what a life it was. I was sentenced on the 20th of March in 1979, charged with ‘agitation and propaganda against the Peoples’ Power.’ I was then 39 years old. Three people testified against me, one of whom was Remzi Lani. When I was released from prison, the other two accusers asked for my forgiveness, whereas Remzi Lani remains proud of his actions. He falsely testified against me and put me in prison for ten years.

Remzi Lani accused me of reciting verses of poet Gjergj Fishta, that I had made propaganda for Faik Konica, and that I kept the Bible in my home. These three accusations which he fabricated were enough to condemn me to rot in prison.

I had seen Remzi Lani on the street, but I was never acquainted with him. I had never had a coffee with him, or even spoken to him throughout my entire life. To convince the State Security that he knew me, one day he came to my house. On that day, we talked about a novel written by Teodor Laço, who wrote about some teachers who walked on a snowy street, and nothing more. But Remzi Lani had intentions otherwise. He wanted to justify his later accusations.

I learned of the accusations after five months of horrific interrogation. Communist Interrogators continued to torture me inhumanely for five months. When they put me in the interrogation cell I weighed 88 kilograms. After four and a half days, when they took me out of the cell, I weighed 56 kilograms. So, through terrible tortures, they had caused me to lose 32 kilograms - while I did not even know who my accuser was.

During the trial, the terrorist communist jury based its decision on the recorded testimony that Remzi Lani had made at the State Security Operative as he did not accept the normal practice, to come face-to-face with me during the interrogation. At the State Security office in which Remzi Lani served, he had crafted a long testimony. During the trial, he was brought in to read it in the presence of 1100 people.

Remzi Lani felt proud, very proud, about what he had fabricated. He held his head up high. In contrast, the two other accusers felt very ashamed and discredited, so much so that they could hardly find the door to exit.

Remzi Lani had good reason to falsely testify against me. He wanted to get a scholarship to university, which he could not achieve in an honest way because he was a degenerated student in high school. The State Security rewarded spies for what they did, a fact he knew very well. Remzi Lani received the scholarship he longed for because of his service while I was locked up in a terrible prison cell.

The Communist Secret Police Archives must be opened. He who has gotten lice cannot remove them using his fingers. Either he has to disinfect them or burn his coat. Communist spies are very heavy burdens on the shoulders of the Albanian people. Today all of the communist spies have created the most powerful businesses. They need to be removed from the government and institutions because a communist spy is not suited to be the director of an institution and moreover institutions like the media.”

Translated from The Albanian by Hilda M. Xhepa

Encounter with a Criminals' Nest

by Bedri Blloshmi


I decided to attend a conference hosted by the European University of Tirana, the Albanian Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Communist Torture, and also by the Office of the People’s General Attorney. The theme of the conference was “Albania with no Torture.” My decision was based on my intrigue on the topic that would be presented by the People’s General Attorney, “Activity of the People’s General Attorney in defense of the rights of the persecuted people by the communist regime.” When I arrived at the main hall of the university, the conference had just begun. I hurried, entering the auditorium in which the meeting was taking place, sitting in a chair toward the back so I could follow the development of this conference. Someone recognized me and offered me a seat at the head table. While presenting me before the audience, he said, “It is with great pleasure that we are honored with the participation of Mr. Bedri Blloshmi, brother of Vilson Blloshmi, the poet executed by firing squad by the communist regime.” There was a drone-like noise in the hall due to the movement in the room, especially from the side where the representatives of the People’s General Attorney were seated. One individual, seated in the back of the room in a pressed suit and tie, hair combed communist-style, stood up and sneaked out. It seemed to me that I had known him years ago and I began to wonder where I might have met him. Unexpectedly, somebody seated beside me whispered to me, “The person you are trying to recall was Petrit Azemaj, the communist interrogator who tortured you.” Before my eyes flashed all the memories of the tortures he had inflicted on my brother and me.

I did not come to this conference to meet with Petrit Azemajn (for he was and always will be a servant of communist criminals), but to listen to his superior, the People’s General Attorney, Ermir Dobjani.

When I took the floor, after I expressed my thoughts on the issue being discussed, I denounced the People’s General Attorney, Ermir Dobjani who has changed the institution he directs into a nest for communist criminals and communist persecutors, individuals who have covered their hands with the blood of innocent victims they had arrested, interrogated, tortured, sentenced and executed on behalf of political motives. It is for this reason that this “People’s Attorney General” has neither the moral nor the legal right to care for victims of the most repressive communist regime in Europe. Ermir Dobjani served the communist regime devotedly all of his life and in the same manner continues to do so to this day. Before I had finished my speech, I was cut off by someone facing me, accusing me, saying that by denouncing the communist criminals, I was conducting a class struggle. He was young man and introduced himself as a representative of the Office of Peoples’ General Attorney. In short, he fervently defended his communist criminal bosses, especially the head of the institution, Ermir Dobjani and his henchman, Petrit Azemaj.

Logically, some questions come up. Who works in this institution? Who has chosen these communist criminals? How are they related to the communist dictatorship? How many more criminals are there in this institution? I have spent years writing and publicly denouncing not only the communist sadists who have arrested, interrogated, tried, tortured, sentenced and executed members of my family and me in the cruelest forms, but also the interrogators, prosecutors, and the judges who barbarically massacred thousands of political prisoners like me. This is my mission in life.

After conducting some research, I learned that the young man (the agent of the Office of the Peoples’ General Attorney) who zealously stood up for his superiors was a creation of communism named Ervin Karamuça. He was recruited to the Office of the Peoples’ General Attorney from the start, just after he finished his schooling, because he was the son of a former communist prosecutor during the dictatorship, and the son-in-law of Fehmi Abdiu, the communist judge who sentenced and hung the anticommunist poet Havzi Nela in 1988, who had suffered for many years in a political prison like me.

I feel it is my duty as a citizen to focus in this writing on Petrit Azemaj, whom I could not bear to look at in the recent conference. This Petrit Azemaj, who like a sewer mouse slipped out of the “Albania with no Torture” conference, began work as an interrogator in the Interior Ministry, Investigation Department of Librazhdi in 1976. At that time his superior was Selim Caka, a former military student expelled from school as thief, but because he was from a communist family, and a talented sadist, they accepted him into the Communist Party and made him Head of the Investigation Department of Librazhdi. Petrit Azemaj and Sulo Ymeri, under the orders of the former head of the Interior Department, Merdar Hasaj and the secretary of the Communist Party of the Interior Department, Hekuran Rrezha; and under the guidance of the head of the Investigation Department, Selim Caka, created in record time an interrogation room in the underground crypt of the Interior Department. This room was facing the jail cells of Genci, Vilsoni, and I. In that underground office cell a table and chairs were cemented into the floor where these experienced criminals tortured us barbarically for many nights. The door of this office was covered in sponge and cloth from the inside. No matter how much you would shout and scream from the tortures done to us by Selim Caka and Petrit Azemaj (etc.), nothing was audible in the hallway. Petrit Azemaj knows this office cell very well. For it is there that he and Selim Caka, Pjeter Ndreca, and others, have inhumanely beaten and tortured political prisoners like me. Naturally the question arises: Does Petrit Azemaj have the moral and legal right to lecture in front of jurisprudence students of the European University of Tirana against torture and inhuman treatment of others? Let the students decide.

Not going into more detail, I am addressing to the President of the Republic of Albania, Mr. Bamir Topi, and also the Speaker of the Parliament of Albania, Mrs. Josefina Topalli, to take proper immediate measures to oust the bloodthirsty persecutors from this institution and then the General Attorney’s Office will be able to serve to all citizens, including the victims of the communist regime, who need protection most.

How can my fellow politically persecuted friends and I go to this institution to ask for help when as soon as we arrive to present our complaints and ask to regain our rights that have been denied and stepped upon, we face Petrit Azemaj. The dreadful face of sadist Petrit Azemaj, the loyal persecutor of the communist regime, is shown- as before- on the cover page of one of the flyers given out by the People’s General Attorney. The beauty (irony) of this flyer is the last sentence in which Petrit Azemaj addresses the Albanian people, “I wish you will not need our intervention.” And I, too, pray to God that Albanians will not need to ask help from this nest of criminals, persecutors of the most bloodthirsty regime known to Europe in the twentieth century.

We, a group of politically persecuted people from the communist regime, are creating a group of initiators and soon we will organize democratic protests in front of this institution and ask for the expulsion of our persecutors from all constitutional institutions, starting with the institution of the Peoples’ General Attorney.

Translated from The Albanian by Hilda M. Xhepa