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What will we do with the police?

Politiko 2024-05-22 19:52:01

On May 20, 2024, the State Police announced that it has made a decision on the dismissal of two senior police officers, Henerigert Mitri and Klodian Shahini, after the latter were declared wanted by order of the Special Court, suspected of participating in the structures of organized crime, providing assistance to murder or organizing the cultivation of cannabis.

"There will be no place in the ranks of the State Police for anyone who breaks the law and, even worse, cooperates with criminal groups," stated the Director General of the State Police Muhamet Rrumbullaku, according to a police press release published in Facebook. [Link]

The exclusion of these two officials is actually a symbolic action, considering that both are wanted. But SPAK's file on the investigation of seven different criminal groups, whose activities were uncovered thanks to data provided by the country's western partners, shows that, in fact, Mitri and Shahini were not the only police officers involved in criminal activities. while many others, some identified and taken as defendants and others, for whom it seems that investigations are continuing, are close associates of crime and also directly involved in criminal events. While the massive cultivation of drugs in the area of Fushë-Kruja, Laçi, Kruja, Mirdita, Lezha or Shkodra seems to suggest that the entire police force that served, at least during 2020, either turned a blind eye, or was directly involved .

The file talks, among other things, about the policeman Altin Morina, who was taken as a defendant, but who, according to the captured data, was an agent of Durim Bami within the State Police. His communications with Bami show that he was not simply circulating information from the police to crime, but served as a realtor, where in many cases, in exchange for payments, he bought the cooperation of his colleagues whenever a problem appeared for the criminal group, the word comes , an exponent was caught with an illegal weapon. Morina also appears as an investor in illegal activities, capable of allocating hundreds of thousands of euros, in exchange for parts of the profits of illegal activities, with cannabis growers in the area of Fushë-Kruja and Kruja.

Cannabis cultivation activity, as far as Durim Bami's communications are captured, was widespread. It stretched from the villages near the Adriatic coast to the highlands of Kruja. There were thousands and thousands of roots, while communications reveal a market of millions of euros and investment opportunities without any control. The cultivation of drugs in such a vast territory seems to have hardly happened without the active silence, out of fear or against payment, of the entire police force in the area where this activity was carried out, from Kamza and Fushë-Kruja, to Laç, Lezhë, Mirdita, Mat, etc.

In this context, every police officer or even every ordinary policeman who worked in these areas during the time that these investigations were carried out, i.e. in 2020 and 2021, should logically be seen as a possible accomplice to the crime. And in this context, the dismissal of the two officers does practically nothing to combat the criminalization of the police ranks, a criminalization that, as far as the file reads, is of massive proportions.

The SPAK file on all seven criminal groups was built as a result of the use by dozens of crime and political figures of special mobile phones that provided encrypted communication through an application known as SKY ECC. The app supposedly receives a piece of information from a mobile, renders it unreadable before transferring it to the receiving mobile to make it readable, without storing it anywhere, thereby ensuring that remote conversations are protected from eavesdropping. In reality, the communications were stored on a server, which the French Police confiscated, thus providing millions of records of organized crime.

The communications between these criminal groups, which were given to the Special Prosecutor's Office by the Western partners, present an Albania that is completely under the control of crime. Crime is able to control the territory, they plant cannabis wherever they can, from the deepest mountain areas to the areas near Tirana International Airport or on the coast. The police, who must control the territory, offer cooperation, coordinating with crime on the days and hours when controls are to be carried out or, on occasion, carrying out operations to actually seize drugs when a criminal group uses the police to attack a other criminal group. Police officers use police assets, not to fight crime, but to serve crime. And the lack of territorial control is seen in some chilling detail. For example, in one case, a suspect from prison communicates with another outside and tells him that a criminal group is targeting to kill someone who lives in his area in Tirana, but who cannot approach him because the territory in question, is under the control of this group. While another suspect communicates to a hired killer, saying that the police are relatively a problem in Tirana, while, "as soon as Kaza Italia passes, no one cares."

The control of territory by crime seems to be so powerful that criminals ask permission to operate in a certain territory, not from police chiefs, but from each other.

Even the usual preventive work that a police force does on subjects who are known, not only by police records, but also publicly, to pose a strong public danger, is nowhere to be seen. The file shows that for more than a year, starting in January 2020 and ending sometime in early 2021, seven criminal groups worked almost every day, ordering assassinations, scouting targets, foiling assassinations, putting bombs exploding in the middle of the city and injuring bystanders or dealing with the usual jobs of drug trafficking, money laundering, investing in construction, buying stores. And yet, criminal gangs seem to be eavesdropping on the police more than the police are eavesdropping on criminal gangs. This makes the action of the exclusion of the two officers announced as wanted, a barsolete with police.