CAN ALBANIA BREAK THE CHAIN? THE 1993-94 TRIALS OF FORMER HIGH COMMUNIST 
OFFICIALS
BY: KATHLEEN IMHOLZ

Sporadic news reports of the seemingly systematic trials and convictions 
in 1993 and 1994 of the former Albanian Politburo members, Nexhmije 
Hoxha (the widow of dictator Enver Hoxha), and Fatos Nano, the head of 
the Socialist Party (SP), are sometimes interpreted as exceptions to the 
general failure of decommunization throughout Eastern Europe. This 
interpretation accords with our expectation that citizens of such a 
repressive regime would burn to bring former malefactors and exploiters 
to justice. In the same vein, the trials and mass dismissals have been 
said to demonstrate the new government's commitment to join Europe after 
decades of isolation.
	But such interpretations disintegrate when the trials and 
government measures in question are examined closely. Far from unique, 
the Albanian experience of coping with the communist past is quite 
similar to the experiences of neighboring countries. Like their 
counterparts elsewhere in Eastern Europe, including Germany, Albanian 
prosecutors have learned the difficulty of gathering and marshaling 
stale evidence against even the most obvious targets. In Albania, too, 
trials for financial misconduct or corruption, rather than for the 
brutal crimes of a totalitarian system, have dominated the process. And 
along with their neighbors, Albanians drew back from decommunization 
when the net was cast too wide. Here, too, for instance, mass firings 
were seen as haphazard, unjust, and pointless.
	No doubt, more Albanians were tried and many more lost their jobs 
in the name of decommunization than in other countries. But the facts on 
the ground nevertheless diverge from the legend. Rather than being ways 
of punishing the crimes of the former regime, trials and dismissals were 
used to demobilize lawful opposition to the present regime or, quite 
simply, as a method to exact personal revenge. Even where justice seemed 
to be at stake, moreover, the Albanian public took little interest in, 
and gained little satisfaction from, the decommunization trials.

The last domino and the first arrests
Dramatic changes first came to Albania in 1990, including the re-
establishment of the Ministry of Justice and the legal profession, 
permission to practice religion, decrees encouraging foreign investment 
(technically illegal under the 1976 Constitution), and amendments to the 
Penal Code dealing with political crimes, among other things. The 
legalization of political opposition in December 1990 was followed by 
the first pluralist elections, on March 31, 1991 in which the Party of 
Labor (PL, since renamed as the SP) won two-thirds of the seats. The 
Democratic Party (DP), a newly-formed opposition party, made an 
impressive showing, especially in urban areas. Ramiz Alia, who had ruled 
the country since the death of Enver Hoxha in 1985, failed to win a 
parliamentary seat, but was elected president by Parliament. The first 
government, headed by Prime Minister Fatos Nano, was forced to resign at 
the beginning of June. A coalition government then ruled the country 
until it, too, was forced to resign in December 1991. It was replaced by 
a caretaker or "technical" government, which held power until the 
elections on March 22, 1992 which the DP handily won.
	Throughout, Ramiz Alia continued as president. Under Albania's 
transitional constitutional law (which replaced the 1976 Constitution in 
April 1991) his term would have continued for four more years, but he 
resigned just after the 1992 parliamentary elections. The new Parliament 
elected DP leader Sali Berisha as president a short time later.
	Even while the SP was still in control in 1991, the country's move 
away from communism was clear and decisive, although, as everywhere in 
the region, those who had been in power previously hoped to remain in 
office under the new system. The strict, isolationist, and Stalinist 
communism that had touched virtually every Albanian family with its 
totalitarian control-imprisoning many, sending their families into 
internal exile, and squelching all dissent and most independent 
thinking-seemed to evaporate overnight.
	Shortly after the March 1991 elections, Genc Ruli, the DP minister 
of finance in the coalition government, launched an investigation into 
certain past abuses by PL leaders and their families. The Ruli Report, 
presented to the People's Assembly in July, became a crucial piece of 
evidence in almost all the subsequent trials of former communist 
leaders.
	At the beginning of September 1991, Manush Myftiu, a former 
Politburo member and close associate of Enver Hoxha, was arrested. A few 
other arrests (but no trials) occurred while Alia was still in power, 
most notably that of Nexhmije Hoxha, in December 1991. Alia may have 
hoped to forestall his own arrest by early action. Possibly he felt that 
his role in shepherding the country though a relatively bloodless change 
of system would protect him. Perhaps he was willing to sacrifice a few 
former associates to distance himself and other socialist leaders from 
the past.
	In any event, his gamble failed. In early September 1992, Alia was 
placed under house arrest. His detention was converted to imprisonment 
in August 1993. While it is difficult to get accurate information about 
Albanian criminal indictments, according to the US State Department the 
initial charges involved corruption, improper personal expenditures, and 
conflict of interest based on Alia's simultaneous service as chairman of 
his party and president. Even if the latter charge had been true, which 
it apparently was not, we would be looking at a blatant case of ex post 
facto punishment. The transitional Constitution had been amended to 
prohibit such dual service only after Alia was no longer party chairman. 
This charge was quietly dropped, but further charges of human rights 
violations were then added to the indictment. Furthermore, the 
corruption charges were converted to "abuse of office in collaboration," 
suggesting that the new government was trying, in good faith, to expose 
the abuses of the prior regime.
 	As powerful symbols of the old regime, Manush Myftiu and Nexhmije 
Hoxha were obvious targets. Hoxha had exercised considerable power 
before and after her husband's death and faithfully tended the flame of 
his memory, although she was never a Politburo member. Myftiu was the 
first to be arrested because, among other things, he had headed the 
committee that had sent the families of arrestees and suspicious persons 
into internal exile. This was a particularly brutal part of the Albanian 
communist system, although the committee's activities had obviously not 
been illegal under the laws of the time. Both Myftiu and Hoxha also were 
charged with corruption. By the end of 1992 most living former Politburo 
members had also been arrested. 

The trials of Nexhmije Hoxha and former Politburo members 
The first trial, against Nexhmije Hoxha and Kino Buxheli, began in 
January 1993. Buxheli had not been a Politburo member, but he had 
figured prominently in the Ruli Report as a supplier of special goods 
for senior communists and their families. It seems clear that his trial 
came first because it was meant to symbolize decommunization and 
Albania's commitment to a democratic future. But while it received some 
international coverage and was watched by Albanian expatriates on 
videotapes delivered to the United States, it was not perceived as an 
important anticommunist statement within Albania. Why? 
	First, Hoxha was tried on relatively minor charges, involving 
procurement of less than $100,000 worth of commodities such as coffee. 
No one doubted that the Hoxha family had lived well and enjoyed goods 
unavailable to other Albanians, but making these charges the sole 
subject of a criminal proceeding seemed to trivialize the more serious 
abuses of the Hoxha regime. Second, since she had not been a high state 
official nor involved in the procurement chain, Hoxha could not actually 
be said to have "procured" anything. But this legal technicality was 
brushed aside. The Albanian public, in any case, saw the Hoxha trial as 
little more than a distraction.
	At the end of January 1993, Hoxha and Buxheli were convicted of 
corruption, although some of the charges were dropped for lack of proof. 
The 72 year-old Hoxha was sentenced to nine years imprisonment; Buxheli 
to four. Both were ordered to repay their ill-gotten gains to the state. 
In May, their convictions were upheld by the Court of Appeals, which in 
fact ratcheted up Hoxha's sentence to eleven years. Albania's highest 
court, the Court of Cassation, affirmed her sentence in August, while 
reducing Buxheli's sentence to three years. Due to a partial general 
amnesty in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the country's liberation 
at the end of WWII, as well as some technical provisions of Albania's 
new Criminal Code, Hoxha's term has only a few years to run. Buxheli was 
released over a year ago.
	While the trial of Hoxha and Buxheli may have attracted some 
interest, the first trial of former Politburo members, which occurred 
later in 1993, received little attention inside or outside the country. 
Indeed, many Albanians have forgotten that it ever took place, and few 
can name the defendants. Manush Myftiu, who had been in jail for over 
two years, was not one of them, nor was Ramiz Alia, arrested more than a 
year before. A decision had been made to try the less prominent members 
of the group first. The charges were reportedly limited to abuses set 
out in the Ruli Report, that is, misuse of between one and two million 
dollars in state funds to obtain personal goods and benefits. At the end 
of 1993, after a three-week trial, all ten defendants were found guilty 
and given sentences of five to eight years in prison and required to 
repay the misused state resources.
	The convicted politicians were Qirjako Mihali and Llambi Gegprifti 
(eight years each), Pali Miska and Lenka Cuko (seven years), Besnik 
Bekteshi, Hajredin Celiku and Foto Cami (six years), and Vangjel 
Cerrava, Prokop Murra, and Muho Asllani Artunda (five years each). All 
had been Politburo members for varying periods, some as long ago as 
1975. Cuko was the only woman in the group. Cami was perhaps the best 
known, having held important positions in the central committee's 
propaganda sector. Like Hoxha, these sentences have been reduced by a 
1994 partial amnesty and the new Criminal Code. Mihali was released from 
Tepelene prison on June 1, the day the new Criminal Code went into 
effect. Although his release suggests that all of those convicted at the 
1993 trial should be set free, since his was the longest sentence, about 
half of them remain in prison.
	The final trial of important personages from the communist regime 
began in April 1994. The defendants were Ramiz Alia, Manush Myftiu, four 
former Politburo members, and four others. This trial had been delayed 
by the prosecution's attempts to include charges beyond the misuse of 
state funds. These efforts focused on three areas: the aftermath of the 
bombing of the Soviet embassy in Tirana in 1951, which led to a number 
of summary executions; the prohibition of religion that began in 1967; 
and various killings along Albania's borders. Indeed, one of the ten 
defendants, Veiz Haderi, was the former chief of internal security in 
the southern town of Sarande, three miles across the straits from the 
Greek island of Corfu. The only charge against him was complicity in the 
deaths of several persons who tried to swim to freedom across the Corfu 
straits.
	Most of the defendants had been involved in the communist regime 
from its early years. Enver Hoxha and many of his closest associates 
were dead, but most of the group assembled for this trial had held 
senior positions and participated in Hoxha's activities. The trial was 
clearly intended to be a collective trial of the communist regime 
itself, an exposŽ of its brutalities and human rights violations. It did 
not achieve this effect, however, although all ten defendants were 
convicted of violating fundamental human rights.
	There were at least four major reasons for this failure. First, 
the delay: the disillusionment apparent during Nexhmije Hoxha's trials 
had grown more palpable by 1994. Widespread corruption remained in the 
judicial system and elsewhere under the DP government, despite progress 
in some areas. In this context, events of what seemed to be a remote 
past did not attract much public attention.
	Second, in contrast to the lack of sympathy displayed for Hoxha, 
many Albanians appreciated Ramiz Alia's role in steering the country 
through a basically non-violent transition. Some even looked on the five 
years of his rule with a nostalgia-a phenomenon that has parallels in 
other parts of East and Central Europe amid the dislocations that 
followed the fall of communism. It is interesting to observe that the DP 
is currently laboring to prove that the 1990 transition was, in reality, 
violent, with many deaths and disappearances.
	Third is the trial of the relatively young chairman of the SP, 
Fatos Nano. This did arouse a public reaction. Nano was arrested in mid-
1993 for events that took place not in the remote communist past but in 
the transitional year of 1991. The Albanian government was forced to 
bring him to trial in early 1994 by international pressure. A few weeks 
before Alia's trial began, Nano was sentenced to 12 years in prison, a 
term even lengthier than Hoxha's. This draconian sentence undermined the 
government's endeavor to highlight communist abuses. Whether or not they 
sympathize with Nano, virtually all Albanians recognize that his 
situation is essentially different from that of the former Politburo 
members who had wielded power for so long. 
	Finally, assembling evidence about communist-era abuses was no 
easier in Albania than in other Eastern European countries. The 
flimsiness of incriminating proof made all the trials legally weak and 
less convincing than they might have been. The Soviet embassy affair 
occurred over 40 years ago. Reliable evidence about it is probably 
impossible to obtain. In dealing with the border killings, Albania 
followed the model of the Germans and the last Berlin Wall killing. But 
even the experienced and well-financed German justice system has not 
found it easy to succeed with criminal prosecutions in such a case. 
Among other things, thorny issues of vicarious liability and the 
retroactive application of criminal laws are raised. Leaving the country 
without permission was considered treason under the Albanian law of the 
time (repealed only in 1990). While all defendants were reportedly found 
guilty as charged, their convictions seemed to have little impact on the 
public at large.
	Alleged violations accompanying attempts to stamp out religion 
were more cut-and-dried. They also roused strong feelings, at least 
among the people who had suffered from the policy. Legally, however, 
while freedom of religious belief and practice may be an internationally 
recognized human right, it was not protected by Albanian laws of the 
time. Indeed, the 1976 Constitution prohibited religious belief 
explicitly. The repressive activities in question, therefore, were of 
questionable illegality. For this and other reasons, convictions of 
former Politburo members for their role in religious repression, too, 
made little public impact.
	The trial of Alia and the other nine had ended by late June 1994, 
but the announcement of the sentences was delayed until July 2, the 
fourth anniversary of the 1990 storming of foreign embassies in Tirana 
by young men who wanted to leave the country (one of the harbingers of 
the end of the communist system). That night, the announcement of the 
guilty verdicts was juxtaposed on Albania's single state-controlled 
television channel with footage of the 1990 events. But popular 
attention had not been focused on the trial, and it did not focus on the 
convictions either. Even the newspaper of the ruling DP, Rilindja 
Demokratike, gave more prominence the next day to a visit by German 
Christian Democrats than to the verdicts, although the trial received a 
small front page story captioned simply "Alia and the others receive 
punishments," accompanied by a picture of Ramiz Alia looking old and 
thoughtful.
	Alia was given a prison sentence of nine years. Manush Myftiu, who 
had already been in jail for almost three years, received a five year 
suspended sentence, primarily because of his health and age (he was 75 
at the time). Adil Carcani, the last communist prime minister, also 
received a five year suspended sentence. Rita Marko and Simon Stefani 
were sentenced to eight years in prison, Aranit Cela seven years, 
Zylyftar Ramizi six years, Hekuran Isai to five years, Rrapi Mino to 
four years, and Veiz Haderi to three years. On appeal, some of the 
sentences were reduced slightly (most notably, Alia's to five years), 
but the convictions were otherwise affirmed. Alia, Myftiu, Carcani, 
Stefani, and Isai were also ordered to repay various sums to the state.
	Hekuran Isai, Llambi Gegprifti and Besnik Bekteshi were released 
from jail within a year. Rita Marko was freed on June 1, the day the new 
Criminal Code became effective. Ramiz Alia's lawyer argued that Alia, 
too, should have been freed immediately because of the new Criminal 
Code. Prison officials countered that he must remain in prison until 
next March. Several factors enter into the calculation of the remaining 
time of his imprisonment, and it is not clear what the exact date of his 
release should be. The present government would doubtless prefer that 
Alia stay in prison during the upcoming electoral campaign, although in 
fact his release would probably make little difference to the elections. 
On July 7, the Court of Appeal agreed with the Alia's lawyer and ordered 
Alia's immediate release.

The politics of decommunization
Among its first acts upon taking power, the DP passed law #7562, which 
added two short paragraphs to the Labor Code. This piece of legislation 
permitted the "competent organ" to transfer or fire any state employee 
for the good of "the reform," a word not defined in the law. Tens of 
thousands of people lost their jobs during 1992 pursuant to this law. 
Since the law provided no criteria for firing or retaining individuals, 
favoritism and arbitrariness marked the process. During this same 
period, judges who rendered decisions the government did not like were 
removed, as was the first attorney general of the DP, the latter in 
flagrant violation of the transitional Constitution. A number of the 
leaders of the DP, including its co-founder, were expelled at the end of 
the summer of 1992, primarily because of their attempts to foster debate 
within the party. Many ordinary Albanians, not only those who lost their 
jobs in the "reform," became disillusioned with the government of the 
DP. They saw that many former PL members, including President Berisha 
and almost half of the DP's parliamentary representatives, were 
flourishing under the new regime, and they perceived that 
"decommunization" was being used as a tool by government party leaders 
to tighten their control over the political process.
	Nano's arrest and trial in 1993 certainly consumed far more public 
attention than the first consolidated trials of former Politburo members 
and as much or more as the second set of trials, including Alia's. 
Nano's trial is sometimes lumped with the others, especially by outside 
observers, but in fact, it had little if anything to do with them. While 
there was at least some attempt to expose the abuses of the communist 
regime in the Politburo and Hoxha trials, the same cannot be said about 
Nano's case.
	The offenses of which he was accused occurred only in 1991, the 
transition year. Now in his early 40s, Nano had been an economist at the 
Institute of Marxism-Leninism in the late 1980s. An interview with the 
Voice of America in 1990 about the market economy raised his visibility 
and, as the last PL government maneuvered to stay in power, its members 
turned to him. Named general secretary to the Council of Ministers 
around the beginning of 1991, then vice prime minister to Adil Carcani, 
he was appointed prime minister after the pluralist election of March 
31, 1991, a position he held for almost two months before his government 
was forced to resign early in June. He was offered another ministerial 
post in the coalition government but decided instead to focus on the 
newly-renamed SP, of which he became chairman at its June 1991 congress. 
He was elected to Parliament in the March 1992 elections.
	In 1992, the SP made a substantial comeback in local elections. 
This evidence of voter support set the stage for the attack on the 
leader of the party that began in the spring of 1993. Waving documents 
in front of the television camera in a manner reminiscent of Senator 
Joseph McCarthy, the head of the State Control Commission began to 
attack Nano in Parliament in April 1993, claiming that the documents in 
question proved major corruption by Nano and others (including Ramiz 
Alia) in the administration of Italian food aid.
	At the end of July, Nano was stripped of his parliamentary 
immunity and was immediately thrown in prison, where he remained for 
some time. At one point, the case against him was considered so weak 
that the district court sent the case back for re-investigation. 
International pressure led to a trial at a time when the government 
probably would have preferred to finish the Politburo trials. The case 
inevitably became confused with those trials in some respects.
	At the beginning of April 1994, Nano was convicted of embezzlement 
of state property largely "for the benefit of third parties" and also of 
falsification of documents. He was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. 
The 1991 food aid may well have been maladministered and perhaps members 
of the Albanian government were in fact implicated, but the evidence 
presented did not show any siphoning off of the aid for Nano's personal 
use or benefit. Nevertheless, by the end of 1994, his conviction and 12-
year sentence had been affirmed by both levels of Albania's appellate 
court system.
	This case has damaged Albania's postcommunist reputation and was 
for a long time considered to be one of the reasons that the Council of 
Europe hesitated to accept Albania as a member. Albania was, however, 
admitted to the Council on June 29,  without any explicit reference to 
the Nano case. Nano's sentence has now been reduced by several years 
because of the amnesty and the new Criminal Code, but he remains in 
prison. As with Alia, the prison administration declined to free him 
under the new code, and his lawyers turned to the courts, seeking to 
reopen his case. The government could conceivably use the new code as an 
occasion to end quietly the situation, and there have been some signs 
that this may occur.
	That attempts by the present Albanian government to punish people 
connected with the past regime are largely or wholly devoid of 
ideological content is underlined by the recent conviction of Enver 
Hoxha's son Ilir for remarks made this April in Modeste, a small-
circulation newspaper. (See Albania Update in this issue.) Upon the 
appearance of the first installment of the interview, Hoxha was placed 
under house arrest on the charge of inciting hatred among "parts of the 
population." The interview, however, did not seem particularly 
inflammatory. Out of a fairly long text, the phrases "these vandal 
bands" (apparently referring to the present rulers), "blind tools" 
(referring by name to several government officials), and "there will 
come a day when accounts will be settled" were cited as criminal.
	Some commentators suggested at the time that the purpose of 
putting Hoxha under house arrest was to keep him from attending May 
ceremonies in Moscow on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the 
end of WWII, where he might have accepted an award on behalf of his 
father. After that event passed however, the government went ahead with 
the trial. One June 8, Hoxha was found guilty under the new Criminal 
Code and sentenced to one year's imprisonment. His appeal is pending.
	Hoxha is said to have been the first person sentenced under the 
new Criminal Code, and it may have been that the government thought the 
conviction of a member of his family would be an appropriate way to 
launch the new code. While Hoxha was arrested under the old code, the 
charge against him was not retroactive. Amendments of November 1993 to 
the prior code had established a number of "speech crimes," and the 
original (pre-June 1) indictment charged him with one of them. Even if 
legally in order, however, the charge lacked substance, and the 
application of the relevant article of the penal law to this situation 
was of questionable constitutionality under Albania's transitional 
Constitution, which contains a fine-looking set of human rights 
provisions.
	If the interview had been truly criminal, its publication would 
have been a violation of Albania's October 1993 press law, resulting in 
liability to the editor who permitted it to be published in his 
newspaper. But the mere enactment of the press law, not to speak of the 
subsequent arrests of several journalists under it, has caused so much 
negative reaction from world-wide human rights and press protection 
groups, that Albania seems to be shying away from using it. The editor 
of Modeste was questioned by the Albanian police to verify the 
publication of the interview, but he himself was not arrested.
	As in the case of their mother, there seems to be little personal 
sympathy for Hoxha's children among the Albanian public, and the case 
has not attracted particular interest inside the country. It is seen as 
just another example of revenge-taking by the present government, in 
this case of a rather minor kind, possibly with the upcoming elections 
in mind, but certainly not as a form of "decommunization."

The past and the future
When Albanians are asked about the trials of Nexhmije Hoxha, Ramiz Alia, 
and other high communist officials, they often reply, with weary 
cynicism, that it is always the same: governments change, and new rulers 
take predictable revenge against their predecessors. Albania's history 
since the declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912 
bears this out. The first ten years of independence were chaotic. The 
country was occupied by the forces of several different countries during 
WWI, although it had remained neutral. A tribal chieftain from Northern 
Albania, Ahmet Zogu, gained power during the early 1920s, but was 
overthrown in June 1924 in what is often called the "Democratic 
Revolution." A Harvard-educated orthodox archbishop, Fan Noli, headed 
Albania's government for six months before Zogu, with help from 
Yugoslavia, was reinstated. Even in that short time, Noli's government 
managed to bring criminal cases against Zogu and his main collaborators, 
although wide-scale purging was avoided.
	When Zogu took over again, Noli and most of his major advisors 
fled the country. Several were assassinated in various European 
countries within the next few years, reportedly by Zogu's men. Noli 
himself returned to Boston, where he finally died in 1965. Zogu made 
himself king in 1928 and ruled until the Italian occupation of April 
1939, when he too fled the country. After WWII, the Communist Party (CP) 
systematically persecuted not only pre-war elements from Zogu's time but 
successive waves of CP members, imprisoning or liquidating them, 
especially after the successive breaks with Yugoslavia (1948), the 
Soviet Union (1960-61), and China (1978). The grave of King Zogu's 
mother was moved from its position of honor at the beginning of the 
communist era, and the grave of Enver Hoxha was similarly moved from its 
position of honor next to the statue of Mother Albania on a hill 
overlooking Tirana at the beginning of the postcommunist era. That 
people might now be cynical about the political use of retroactive 
justice is easy to understand.
	In the past few years, a genuine transfer of power has taken place 
in Albania, but progress has been marred by corruption, undemocratic or 
questionable actions of the new regime, massive dismissals of competent 
people under the pretext of removing those tainted by the communist 
past, (without removing all of them) and a regional bias.
	Even a socialist victory in the next elections would not bring 
back communism, Stalinism, or what the DP often calls "Enverism." There 
is no other country of the region where the communist system left behind 
such total economic ruin. But the danger that other groups who obtain 
power might continue with revengeful attacks is of intense concern to 
those who want a better future for Albania. No one knows how the 
socialists would respond to the actions that have been taken against 
their chairman if they gain power. In the interview that led to his 
arrest, Ilir Hoxha said that when the accounts are settled, it will not 
be for revenge, but to see justice established. Unfortunately, the line 
between justice and revenge is sometimes difficult to draw.

Kathleen Imholz is a lawyer in New York and a frequent visitor to 
Albania.