ALBANIA: DEMOCRATIC PARTY RALLY PROTESTS KILLING OF THEIR LEADER AZEM HAJDARI AND HIS BODYGUARD

Record ID: 215297

  • Title: ALBANIA: DEMOCRATIC PARTY RALLY PROTESTS KILLING OF THEIR LEADER AZEM HAJDARI AND HIS BODYGUARD
  • Date: 20th September 1998
  • Summary: TIRANA, ALBANIA (SEPTEMBER 20, 1998) (RTV) 1. GV/SLV CROWD WALKING TOWARDS CEMETERY (2 SHOTS) 0.12 2. SCU PEOPLE PLACE FLOWERS ON HAJDARI GRAVE 0.16 3. CLOSE UP OF GRAVE 0.19 4. SLV MORE OF PEOPLE ARRIVING AT CEMETERY WITH FLOWERS 0.24 5. MV TWO MEN HOLDING MARBLE HEADSTONE WITH HADJARI'S NAME ON 0.31 6. SLV MORE OF CROWDS
  • Embargoed: 5th October 1998 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: TIRANA, ALBANIA
  • City:
  • Country: Albania
  • Reuters ID: LVA833ZC9E2JTLZMGWQSPRGQTXFF
  • Story Text: More than three thousand opposition Democratic Party supporters marched on Sunday (September 20) to a cemetery outside the Albanian capital, Tirana, to protest the killing last week of their leader Azem Hajdari and his bodyguard.

    The peaceful rally marked the sixth consecutive day of protests called by opposition leader and former president Sali Berisha, who blames Socialist Prime Minister Fatos Nano for the killings.

    Tirana erupted in its worst violence in 18 months last Sunday and Monday and Nano's Socialist-led government has accused Berisha of attempting a coup during the violence.On Friday, parliament lifted Berisha's immunity from prosecution to open the way for his arrest.

    The supporters, waving flowers and pictures of Hajdari, walked the four km (2.5 miles) from Tirana's main Skanderbeg Square towards the cemetery on the fringes of the capital.

    They shouted anti-government slogans.

    Berisha, accompanied by his wife, joined the procession a few hundred metres before the cemetery.The former president placed flowers on his aide's grave, but did not address the crowd.A Moslem cleric delivered a short prayer.

    The rally was peaceful.Reuters photographers saw no evidence of police units.

    Traffic, however, was paralysed and all shops along the way were barricaded for fear of a repeat of last week's orgy of looting.

    European envoys, on a brief visit to Albania on Saturday, urged Albania's leading politicians to find a peaceful solution to the country's turmoil and blamed Berisha for undermining peace in the poor Balkan nation.

    The envoys said they would support any initiatives for peace in Albania and called on President Rexhep Meidani, former leader of the Socialist Party who is now an independent, to take charge of the process of mediating a political solution.

    They warned the former president that he and his party would be isolated by the international community unless they stopped undermining Albania's political process.

    Nano's government was also admonished for dragging its feet on implementing its political programme.


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