The lawyer for the victims of the “January 21” case, Idajet Beqiri, has just issued the most weighty statement in recent years. According to him, the investigations into the January 21 tragedy have effectively ended and the case now only awaits the handcuffs for former Prime Minister Sali Berisha.
During an interview with “Abc News”, lawyer Beqiri brings to light what he considers the “king” evidence of the file: Berisha’s own public statements, in which he admitted that he had positioned snipers and that he was willing to eliminate up to 300 people, including the leaders of the opposition at the time.
But the legal storm does not stop with Berisha alone; behind him, the entire command structure of that day risks collapsing, starting with the former Minister of Interior, the highest leaders of the State Police and the commander of the Guard. The lawyer also reveals a chain of manipulations with false expert reports that attempted to hide the murders by claiming that they were shot at close range, when in reality the blows were well-controlled and deadly from a distance.
Furthermore, Beqiri warns that January 21 is just the tip of the iceberg, as SPAK is also holding other serious files, such as those from the Tropoja events. He publicly calls on citizens to protest in front of SPAK to demand accountability for the delay in bringing the person who ordered the massacre to justice. This strong warning comes as a direct blow that promises to stir up the waters of justice and put the main protagonists of one of the darkest events in Albanian history behind bars.
Excerpt from the interview:
-Lawyer Beqiri, since we are on the state or justice side, you have said that two major processes are close to being resolved. What processes are we talking about and does SPAK already have evidence to request the arrest of any specific person?
Idajet Beqiri: The problem is that even to these protesters, we always, not humorously but we tell them, we have told them openly: either there is a place to protest in this country, or there is nowhere else to go. And your protest, we have told you, would be truly meaningful if you would stand up and go there in front of SPAK and tell SPAK: “You have, from 2011 until today, a full 15 years that you have not solved the murders of January 21.”
Those murders have an author, and that author, who is their orderer, the beneficiary who benefited from them, and the destroyer of democracy, the murderer of democracy in Albania — and he received this stamp from the United States, in fact, persona non grata — is Sali Berisha.
So, why don’t you protestors stand up and stand in front of SPAK and say: why don’t you bring this murderer to justice, why don’t you bring this person who ordered these murders, this massacre that he committed on January 21st, to justice?
People’s lives have been lost, Albanian blood has been shed there. And this process is actually coming to an end. Yes, this process has actually completed the investigation. That issue is now awaiting the arrest of Berisha and the other commanding officers, starting with the Minister of Interior, the deputy directors of the State Police, the director of the State Police and the commander of the Guard and others in succession.
-So lawyer, you accuse Sali Berisha as the organizer and orderer of January 21, but what is, let’s say, the strongest concrete evidence that directly links him to the murder order and do you have direct evidence, let’s say, that links Sali Berisha to the murder order?
Idajet Beqiri: The problem is that the investigation of a case is not a single piece of evidence to be considered the “queen of evidence”. The evidence for January 21 is complete. It is a series of evidence. The most important evidence there is the testimonies of Sali Berisha himself, who said it with his own mouth, declared it publicly, and was heard by everyone, young and old, Albanian and international, who said: “I would not kill just one, but I had led the snipers who had taken positions to five positions. I was in one of them and I myself would have killed 300, I would have killed the leader of the opposition as well.”
So there is no more important evidence than this. Then the other evidence is, as we have said, a whole chain, starting with Ali Libia, who he used, who perhaps killed them and wanted to blame the socialists and the protesters, saying that they were shot at close range at a time when it was not true; whether it is the order he gave to the experts to make a false expert report to say that they were shot at close range, at a time when they were shot from a distance and with a sniper and in well-controlled directions that they should be killed and hit where their blows would be truly deadly, or all the other subsequent evidence.