TIRANA, Sept. 2, 2022 – Albania’s former president, Ilir Meta, has filed a lawsuit against the authority in charge of the files of the former communist secret police, Sigurimi, arguing it has committed six legal violations in an attempt to fabricate a file connecting a young Meta to Sigurimi.
He has denied any ties to Sigurimi, stressing that he had previously received clean certificates from the state commissions in the 1990s and the Authority for Information on the Files of the former State Security (Sigurimi) in 2017 before becoming president.
Meta says the suit he has filed could lead to criminal charges against members of the authority, including abuse of office, falsification of state documents, computer forgery, forgery of seals, stamps or forms, dissemination of false information that causes panic and disclosure of secrets acts or data.
Meta only recently handed over the office of head of state and immediately became the target of a campaign of government-friendly media outlets that had cited a file seeming to implicate him with Sigurimi.
The file alludes that Meta spied on a fellow student when the two of them were living in a dorm at the University in Tirana. Meta, however, never lived in the dorms. And there are other inconsistencies too, say the experts looking at it — with government critics saying the file is clearly a political tool to try to neutralize Meta as an opposition leader. He just recently returned at the helm of a major opposition movement he has rebranded as the Freedom Party.
The former president said that the legal violations with the publication of falsified documents by the files authority and the Parliament were done with political motivation to serve Prime Minister Edi Rama in attacking the opposition and covering up corruption scandals.
“The authority made seven decisions in one day, when in a normal procedure it would take six months. It has investigated in violation of the law against an official, who has several clean certificates, without any official request, but ordered by an anonymous email,” Meta told the media.
Meta is a perennial politician and has held every position the country has in his career of 30 years. He was a member of parliament in the first post-communist legislature and served as an MP in all following legislatures but the last. He has served as minister, in several positions, Prime Minister and Speaker of the Parliament before being elected President in 2017 with the support of the ruling Socialist Party that is now trying to ban him from politics.
The authority informed the Parliament, to which it reports, that it had come across information and data on a person with a high political profile. The institution was asked by an unnamed source to look into certain files.
The authority asked Parliament to change some of the previous rules to allow for changes in how the clean certificates are issued, voiding some that had been issued by earlier commissions.
A group of ruling Socialist Party MPs quickly moved to write amendments to the laws that could be far ranging and could lead to a ban of Meta himself and his party from Albanian politics.
Opposition representatives have reminded the Socialists that it is them and not the opposition that was most strongly associated with the former communist regime. The Socialist speaker of parliament in the previous legislature, for example, was the last interior minister of the communist regime.
The Authority for Information on the Files of the former State Security (Sigurimi) told the media that Meta’s accusations are unfounded, malicious toward the institution and insulting to the dignity of each of the members.
“The authority is open to cooperate with law enforcement institutions and all interested parties,” it said in a statement. “Each activity of the authority is based on laws and by-laws, on collegial decision-making, accompanied by documentation, easily verifiable at any time.”
