Authority for Information

A cooperation agreement intended to boost efforts to find the remains of thousands of people who went missing under Albania's repressive Communist regime was signed on Thursday by the head of the State Police, Gledis Nano, and Gentiana Sula, president of the Authority for Information on Former State Security Documents, AIDSSH.

Aferdita Dalliu was a child when her grandfather, Hafiz Ibrahim Dalliu, a Muslim scholar with a strong reputation for patriotism, was imprisoned by the Communist regime that ruled Albania with iron fist for more than 45 years until 1991.

An exhibition entitled 'Tirana in the Eyes of the Sigurimi' was held at the Palace of Congresses in the capital on Thursday, illustrating how people in the Albanian capital were spied upon and persecuted under the Communist regime that ruled the country until the early 1990s.

Albania commemorated the 70th anniversary of the execution of 15 Albanian MPs on Tuesday. The group had dared to obstruct former dictator Enver Hoxha's plans to install a communist regime in Albania after WWII.

Ismail Kadare said in an open letter distributed to media on Wednesday that he asked two weeks ago for the files held on him by the Sigurimi - Albania's Communist-era secret police - to be opened up so he can discover who spied on him.

"I inform you that I requested the opening of my file two weeks ago, without putting any condition or restriction [on it]," he said in the letter.

The Authority for Information on Former Communist Police Secret Files, which was established at the beginning of January, has started to receive the first requests from Albanian institutions looking to verify the pasts of people seeking promotion to senior positions or receiving medals from the state.