30 MAR 12 / 08:33:11
Albania Reporter Faces Charges for Probing Official’s Past
The head of department of communications in the premier’s office, Gjovalian Prenga, has filed criminal charges against a veteran crime reporter who alleged that Prenga had ties to the former Communist regime.
Besar Likmeta BIRN Tirana
Albanian newspapers | Photo by : Besar Likmeta
Lindita Cela, a reporter for the daily Shekulli, published a story last October over a conflict that had emerged in the Agency for the Legalization, Urbanization and Integration of Informal Areas, ALUIZNI.
The former head of ALUIZNI, Shaban Memia, had accused his deputy, Ferdinand Shehu, of having had ties to the former Communist security apparatus, which he had not come clean about when applying for his post.
After firing Shehu, Memia distributed a dossier to the local media accusing Shehu of having worked for the Ministry of Interior during the Communist regime.
To prove his case Memia, sent media outlets in Tirana a secret document from the state archives, which included 13 people that had been appointed by the Ministry of Public Order in April 1992, which, according to Memia, proved Shehu’s ties to the repressive security apparatus of the former regime.
In the list of people that had been hired from the Ministry of Interior were included Prenga’s name and that of a former Democratic Party MP, Safet Sula.
The next day, on October 7, Cela wrote an article in the daily Shekulli, describing the row and pointing out that Memia had revealed two other officials or so-called “spies” of the former regime, apart from his deputy.
Sula and Prenga reacted to the newspaper’s story by arguing that their hiring in the ministry in 1992, at the dawn of the last Communist controlled government in Albania, did not necessarily mean they had ties to the old security apparatus.
A few months later, in February, Prenga filed criminal charges for slander in Tirana’s District Court, seeking a two-year sentence and a fine for the reporter for describing him as a spy in the story.
In Albania where there has been much debate on the lustration of former security agents over the past two decades, officials of the old security apparatus are often referred to as spies, although they may have worked for the police, the Interior Ministry as well as for the feared secret police, the “Sigurimi”.
Cela told Balkan Insight that the charges have no merit because the article did not accuse Prenga of being a former security services agent.
“The article described the row between [ALUIZNI] officials who were using secret documents from state archives to accuse each-other as spies,” she said.
“We only asked if the deputy head of the agency was being fired as a former spy based on this secret document, while these two other high officials remained unscathed,” she added.
Prenga told Balkan Insight that he had brought the charges against the reporter and the newspaper because he could not bear being described in the article “as a spy of the former Sigurimi.
“In the article there is no allusion, I am described as nothing less than spy of the Sigurimi, a description that for someone of my upbringing and origin and from a family that was persecuted during the Communist regime I cannot stand,” Prenga said.
According to Prenga the document offered by the former head of ALIZNI, Memia, is dated in 1992, by when the “former communist regime had been demolished legally.”
The document, a copy of which was also obtained by Balkan Insight, shows that Prenga was appointed on April 13, 1992, by former Minister of Public Order, Colonel Vladimir Hysi.
At the time Albania was headed by a technical government installed in December 1991 to send the country into early elections. Three months later the centre-right Democratic Party defeated the former Communists in the March 22, elections.
Hysi, a representative of the old Communist guard in the technical government of Premier Vilson Ahmeti, served from December 1991 until April 13, 1992.
In 1996 Hysi was tried for abuse of office and for hindering the discovery of the truth, related to an order he issued at the end of 1991 to destroy secret documents, including those of former security agents.
Prenga’s appointment to the Interior Ministry occurred during Hysi’s last day in office and the document was signed by the former minister himself.
The criminal charges against Cela mark the first time that a reporter is being tried for a criminal offence since the government of Prime Minister Sali Berisha came to power in 2005.
Although there have been many civil cases for slander from government officials, Berisha vowed when he came to power that no official of his would press criminal charges against journalists.
Prenga told Balkan Insight that he understood Berisha’s promise differently, arguing that the premier meant that public officials could not sue journalists for cases related to their official duties but only for personal matters.
“In this case the journalist and the newspaper don’t bring up anything related to my official duties, but they deal with my name and personality, which is being denigrated,” Prenga said. “As a citizen I am defending my personal dignity,” he added.
Cela’s lawyer Andi Kananaj, told Balkan Insight that the reporter will not face a prison sentence because since the case was filed in February parliament has scrapped prison sentences as a punishment for slander.
Kananaj maintained that the case against his client has no legal merit because the word “spy” was used in quotations marks in the article, referring to the allusion made by Memia, while the newspaper a day after the article was published gave Prenga and Sulaj the right to respond to the allegations.
“The merits of the case will be discussed on whether damages should be awarded,” Kananaj said.
On Tuesday Albania’s Union of Journalist condemned the lawsuit as an attack by state officials on journalists who publish critical stories based on documents and facts.
The union expressed concern about the growing number of slander cases against journalists in general.
“The explosion of these cases shows the existence of a threatening climate toward journalists and the free media,” the union said.