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Is Albania cracking down on Islamic radicals?
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On November 2, 2009, the day when Albania was hosting the Conference on Religious Tolerance, Albania authorities shut down an Islamic library in Tirana, as the city planners needed it for another project, wrote Ramiz Zekaj in Koha Jone, www.kohajone.com. As per Zekaj’s article, this has infuriated many Albanian Muslims and they are demanding to know why their library had to be closed.
According to confidential sources from the General Prosecutor’s Office in Tirana, this library’s has do with the arrest of Muhamed Abdullah, a Wahhabi imam, who was arrested by Albanian authorities on charges of terrorism. Further, a source from Rasim Hasanaj’s Office of the State Committee of Cults, who asked to remain anonymous, opined that this library had to be closed because radical Islamic Wahhabies, both Albanians and foreign, were using this place to preach hatred and violence to young people. Moreover, she added that the funds to operate this library were coming from Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations, which have become a national security concern.
Since 1994, when Salih Berisha, then the President of Albania, signed a membership agreement with the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), despite the fact that parliament never ratified such agreement, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, and other members of the OIC, paid for thousands of young Albanian Muslim men to study Islam in Arab counties and now they are back in Albania, joined by thousands of imams from Arab counties, preaching the most radical form of Islam, Wahhabism, said a source from the Islamic Foundation in Tirana.
It is alleged that Berisha has forged close connections with various Islamic organization, and that he and his family still receive over one million dollars per year from these organizations for operating freely in Albania. In 1992, according to Fatos Klosi, former head of the SHISH, Bin Laden, the most wanted terrorist in the world, visited Albania with Berisha’s acquiescence, reported Associated Press, USA Today, on November 28, 1998. And according to Israeli Mossad, Bashkim Gazidede, the head of SHISH under Berisha, established ties with Islamic counties that sponsored Jihad, and he personally visited Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt. As recently as April 2008, Berisha sent Jozefina Topalli, Speaker of the Albanian Parliament, to met with Saudi Arabia’s King, Al Saudi, where she asked for more Saudi investments in Albania.
However, a secret service official in Tirana told Balkan Insight on October 13, 2009, that the activities of Albanian “Islamic radicals were being closely monitored as a serious threat to national security” www.balkaninsight.com. Albania’s Secret Service, SHISH, has been closely cooperating with the CIA since 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center in identifying, locating, and monitoring Islamic activities in Albania.
