GJIROKASTER/TIRANA, June 24 – More than 400 police officers are combing through Lazarat making arrests and looking for weapons after a member of Albania’s RENEA elite police forces was killed and two others were wounded in the notorious marijuana-growing village.
The incident marked a return to deadly violence in an area that was previously lawless but which had been pacified in a massive police operation a year ago.
Police said the shooting happened as RENEA forces were trying to arrest several people suspected of having shot toward other police officers in the area overnight Tuesday.
The fallen officer, Ibrahim Basha, 31, was shot in the head, and died on the way to the regional hospital, police said.
Basha was a veteran of the elite commando unit of the Albanian armed forces. He had served two tours with the NATO mission in Afghanistan, according to multiple sources.
– How the events unfolded –
Police stationed in the village were shot at Tuesday evening and asked for backup. No one was hurt in this earlier incident.
RENEA special forces came as backup and stopped a car transporting weapons, seizing three rifles and arresting the driver.
They were shot at this time from a nearby house, police said in a statement. Police reinforcements quickly arrived to help and repelled the attack.
Local media reported continued shooting until 400 police officers surrounded and stormed the village, arresting several suspected gunmen.
Police believe more are on the run or in hiding in the village and were looking for them house to house as of print time.
– PM: ‘We are in mourning’ –
Prime Minister Edi Rama, along with the country’s interior and health ministers, visited the injured police officers in a hospital in Tirana.
“We are in mourning … and I believe every Albanian who values the honesty, courage and service of the state police is in mourning too,” Rama told journalists.
The two wounded officers were flown by helicopter to Tirana to receive treatment. They are in stable condition, hospital officials said.
“One of the injured has a surface head wound and the other a wound in the left shoulder,” said Gjovalin Bushi, the trauma hospital director. “We believe they will make a full recovery.”
– An ongoing operation –
Wednesday’s incident is the worst in Lazarat so far after the government intervened to stop the massive cultivation of marijuana in the area, which had gone on unchecked for years.
Over the past year, police has had a strong presence in the village, and there had been no similar incidents.
Lazarat, 200 kilometers south of the capital, Tirana, came to prominence after a five-day police siege in which special police forces came under intense fire from automatic weapons and rocket launchers from local homes.
The raid destroyed 102 tons of marijuana and 530,000 marijuana plants with an estimated market value at the time of some 6 billion euros, which is more than half of the country’s annual gross domestic product.
– Details emerge about hero officer –
Basha had served in Afghanistan for several years and had been a member of the elite police unit in Albania since December 2014, Basha’s relatives told Albania’s News 24 TV.
“He survived the Taliban in war, only to be killed by his own countrymen at a time of peace,” a relative told the television station.
The Muslim Community of Albania organization expressed its condolences to the family of the officer in a statement, saying Basha was an active member in the religious community and was fasting for Ramadan the morning he was killed.
On his Facebook page, Basha’s last post was to wish his friends and relatives all the best for Ramadan.
– Statements of condolences issued –
An array of statements honoring the fallen police officer and contemning the attack followed news of the killing.
The Delegation of the European Union to Albania expressed “its sincere condolences to the family of the police officer killed and sympathy to the officers injured in this morning’s operation against drug trafficking in Lazarat.”
It added, “We salute the courage of the Albanian police officers who are serving their country by taking forward the fight against drug trafficking and we will continue to strongly support all those in Albania who work to enforce the rule of law.”
The U.S. Embassy in Tirana also issued a statement, offering its deepest condolences to Basha’s family, also noting that Basha was a veteran of the Albanian Special Forces, twice deployed with NATO forces in Afghanistan.
“Our thoughts are also with those officers who were wounded in the line of duty. The U.S. Embassy fully supports Albanian law enforcement efforts to ensure the safety of Albanian citizens, and calls for the perpetrators of this horrible crime to be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law. We strongly condemn any and all violence directed at law enforcement personnel,” the U.S. Embassy statement said.
