Denada Jushi
The cases where SPAK has managed to bring police officers who collaborate with organized crime to justice have been numerous, bringing to light a dangerous phenomenon: how far crime can penetrate.
IH was an Anti-Terrorist officer, and his duty was to detect crime, but the arrest by SPAK on Thursday, as part of a large-scale operation carried out in cooperation with Italian authorities, showed that this officer was in fact serving crime and not the police. At the time of the execution of the order, Haxhiaj was at the Police Academy, where he was engaged in a three-month specialization course for Anti-Terror.
Another case where police officers became parties to the crime was the assassination attempt on Gilmando Dani, which was executed near Rinas Airport, while the driver of the luxury vehicle was Muçi Shaljani, an AMP agent, who died a few hours later.
Similar cases were also related to Ervis Martinaj. The latter was assisted by the operative's agent, Jeton Lami.
Other cases have been extracted from the files known as “Metamorphosis” or through the use of SKY/ECC. One of them was Oltion Bistri, the former head of the Operational Force. Dritan Metaj, the former chief of police of Kurbin, was arrested in October 2023 on charges of providing assistance to a criminal group to avoid arrest. Other names such as the former deputy director of the Shkodra Police, the former director of the Lezha Police or the former employee of the Durrës Police again show the cooperation of senior police officials with organized crime, from protection to the transfer of information.
This concern has been raised several times by the head of SPAK, Altin Dumani, who has stated that the cooperative relationship with the police is often unreliable.
"In certain cases, especially those involving organized crime, we cannot cooperate with the police because it turns out that there are police officers involved, and this at high levels," Altin Dumani stated in his annual report to the High Prosecutorial Council, emphasizing that cracking down on state police officers in these cases is essential.
This phenomenon is worrying, because when crime manages to penetrate the structures that are supposed to fight it, it is revealed how endangered the colleagues who carry out actions in accordance with the law are. These implicated officials endanger the work of prosecutors and judges who investigate and try crime, but above all they endanger citizens, who theoretically should seek protection from the police, not knock on the door of criminals for protection. /acqj.al
