The state at the helm of assassinations

Alfred Lela

At the execution of Gilmando Dani, a previously convicted criminal figure, it is not the murder itself that surprises anyone. In that world where people live by the bullet, chances are you will also fall by the bullet.
Three elements stand out in this sophisticated execution — in fact, they scream.

First, let us consider the time of the attack.
Even for Paul Castellano, the boss of the Gambino family in New York, the assassins chose an evening hour — a time when they could be less visible and hide more easily, but also because mobsters (at least those in America) do not allow themselves an open challenge to the forces of law.

Today, in one of the most heavily watched segments of Albania, several men fired at a luxury, armored car carrying their enemy. It was a lucky day for the random bystanders nearby, but not for the target.
The Rinas Police Station is barely 200 meters away. Cameras and radars of every kind, in every corner.
Security, at least in theory, is the keyword in this area.

The assassins did not care.
This kind of security means nothing to them because they are ready to make this challenge — a provocation — to the state.
In their language, they “don’t give a damn.”
Regardless of wealth, the saying “we’ve made up our minds” applies.
And no matter how powerful a criminal group might be, the state, if it had the will, could neutralize it anytime, anywhere.
That is where we have stalled.

All this connects to the second element, found in the car of the executed man — where, miracle of our times, sat a police officer.
Moreover, one of those charged with internal oversight — the kind who is supposed to guard the police from corruption, in a word.

This is not the main reason, nor the only link between crime and the state — it is just a thread.
As the wiretaps show, crime bosses have direct connections with police chiefs and directors who are on their payrolls.
Within that hierarchy, an officer from the Internal Affairs Directorate cannot serve for more than what he was in this case: the driver.

In this space, where the borders of the law have been erased, move the people of the criminal world.
They are neither afraid nor cautious, because they see what they do as “a business like any other.”
The fatal thing here is that those who should be facing them — those who should see their job as a public-safety profession — have also turned it into a business.

Crime has no fear of the police, because the police have no fear of the law, because they, in turn, see that same lack of fear from their chiefs and from the chiefs of those chiefs at the very top of the state pyramid.
As for fear of God — don’t ask. It hasn’t even been a hundred years since the churches and mosques were torn down.

There is also a third element, one that relates to what we hear being said and goes completely against what we see happening.
Today, the Minister of the Interior, less than an hour after the attack, was boasting in the Parliamentary Security Committee, with a self-confidence born either of naivety or of indifference.
Her figures and statements were more an exercise in propaganda than the expression of a high state official truly concerned with public safety and order.

We cannot entirely blame her.
Ms. Koçiu is nothing more than an imitator of her boss, who has long lived in the era of “post-truth” and “alternative facts.”
In plain terms, he does not consider facts but overturns them for the sake of propaganda.
He is not interested in the state, but in power.
And that power he has built so completely that it would collapse overnight without its reliance on crime and gangs.

And that is the ultimate reason why the bandits appeared today in broad daylight, right next to the international airport, killed their rivals, and burned the getaway car a few kilometers away.
For a long time now, they and others like them have been in a business relationship with the state — the very state that should protect citizens from them.
Sometimes the state hires them as subcontractors, and at other times, the opposite happens.

That is why in the cars of these “tough guys” you find every kind of state uniform — from police blue to the dark cloaks of justice officials.