Albania ponders opening its Sigurimi secret police files

Past casts shadow as Balkan laggard moves toward NATO and EU

A communist sympathizer speaks during a protest rally in Tirana, the capital of Albania, in a file photograph. The Balkan country is now pondering opening its communist-era secret police files.

TIRANA (Reuters) – In the early 1970s, Spartak Ngjela spoke out against the Stalinist government of Albania. He spent 14 years in prison for taking such liberties.

Today a member of parliament, he is fighting to open up the files of the Sigurimi secret police, 18 years after Europe’s most hardline communist regime under Enver Hoxha collapsed.

“I want to open all the files of these agents, these spies, everyone who is involved in state terror,” he said passionately in the Albanian capital of Tirana. “Without the Sigurimi, Enver Hoxha was nothing. The secret service at that moment was his right hand.” Years after other ex-communist states in Eastern Europe have dealt with their secret police files, Albania is grappling anew with the records of the Sigurimi.

The Balkan country has certainly made tremendous advances since communism. Tirana’s roads have steady traffic where private cars were once banned, and a construction boom across Albania is giving a new face to the country. Still, the past casts a shadow as the ex-communist maverick moves toward NATO membership and dreams of joining the European Union.

“This is a never-ending soap opera since the first day of the fall of communism,” Edi Rama, mayor of Tirana and the Socialist opposition leader, said in an interview. “Communism in Albania was like an atomic bomb on the mind-set of the people. The explosion has ended but the radiation still hurts.”

During Stalinist rule, the secret police employed 800 staffers, including operatives and clerks, according to a former Sigurimi official who did not want to be named. Yet they also relied on a vast web of unpaid informants, some of whom were blackmailed into helping keep tabs on fellow citizens.

“Why did they collaborate? The government was really powerful here,” said the official, who oversaw a network of informers in Tirana and elsewhere. “There was no money at all, it was all built on ideological principles, an obligation to pay back for one’s mistakes.” No one seems to know exactly how many Albanians worked as informants or helped the Sigurimi, but lawmaker Ngjela estimates it involved 17 percent of the population. In the 1960s, one communist official once said one in four people were involved.

For now, most officials are not calling for an opening of all files of those who were monitored, a system used in former communist East Germany. The Albanian files were opened selectively before the 1996 elections, allowing the scrutiny of potential candidates, but no permanent rules have been set.

“I am not in favor to open up for everybody,” Prime Minister Sali Berisha told Reuters.

”You see, we were a rural society. It would create big problems if we open in such a way. I am in favor to open for those who have been elected and high-ranking people.

”It is not to blame (people). What is very important is to close the chapter.” One issue complicating a full unveiling involves current politicians, some of whom could be embarrassed if the skeletons in their closets are revealed.

“Truth is always very important for a democracy and the future, and everything that has to do with truth must be revealed,” Anastasios, the Orthodox archbishop of Albania, said in an interview.

“And don’t forget that those in the leadership, they did not get there suddenly,” he said, hinting at their involvement in the communist past. “They were born here and were here even before 1990. That means they were born in another atmosphere, another ideological environment.”

Ngjela accused Prime Minister Berisha of having denounced people during his time as a Communist Party official. In the interview, Berisha denied that he or any member of his cabinet had any secret police links and added anyone who did should not be in his government.

Another question surrounds the completeness of the secret service records, with government officials and outside experts saying parts have already been destroyed. In addition to the handwritten main files, an additional register exists with names of informants, code names and how long they served, the former Sigurimi official said.

“No one would be able to find out exactly what these people had done,” he said. “Anyway, society should not penalize these people today. Many of these people made a contribution to their homeland.” Elsa Ballauri, executive director of the Albanian Human Rights Group, expressed disappointment that civil society was not paying more attention to the issue, but said she expected parliament to pass some sort of law. “I don’t know how much of it will be implemented,” she added.