Part Three
Testimony of officer A.C., who served for 30 years in the Republic Guard, as part of the escort and physical security group of Enver Hoxha
Memorie.al / “For nearly thirty years, I have seen how Enver Hoxha relaxed over the photographs of his victims. He would stay for about 6 hours a day over the photographs of the executed bodies of Koçi Xoxe, Beqir Balluku, Petrit Dume and Hito Çako. But over the photographs of Mehmet Shehu and those of Xhevdet Mustafa, as well as others killed in that event, he relaxed for more than three days.” This is the chilling testimony of the officer who stayed close to Enver Hoxha for about twenty years. According to the former high-ranking military man, Enver was extraordinarily passionate about photographs of bodies killed by bullets. This love had first appeared as early as 1945. After one of his close associates was declared an enemy of the party and the court sentenced him to be shot, another procedure would begin. As soon as the prosecutor had given the condemned man the *colpo di grazia*, a professional photographer had to take over 30 photos of the bloody body in 30 different positions, and the photos had to be developed and printed within six hours.
Continued from the previous issue
Minute by minute, the shooting of Kadri Hazbiu and Feçor Shehu by 14 guardsmen
The car, having entered a lane through a vineyard whose grapes were still unripe and which belonged to the “Gjergj Dimitrov” Farm, stopped near a small meadow. At the head of the meadow there was a fence and about 300 metres further, a house with no lights at all…! First to get out was officer M.D., and then all those in the car body got out…!
They put them into the pit handcuffed to each other…!
Officer M.D. ordered the guardsmen to get out, except for four captors who held by the arm the citizens sentenced to be shot, Kadri Hazbiu and Feçor Shehu. The platoon of soldiers was divided into two parts. They were placed in two single-file columns of seven men each. The platoon of soldiers, with automatic weapons on their shoulders, headed towards the head of the meadow, where there was a fence with concrete posts and barbed wire with an arrow at the top – an original invention of Mehmet Shehu, so that when enemies attacked they would “impale themselves” on them. The fence was partially overgrown with brambles.
Next to the fence, a pit had been dug, 2.5 metres long and about one metre wide. From the amount of fresh earth left at its side, it seemed that the pit was no more than 80 centimetres deep. As soon as the car arrived, the four civilians who had dug the pit shook their shovels and left, disappearing into the darkness on the opposite side. The two columns of soldiers stopped about 11 metres in front of the pit that had been dug at the foot of the fence. Their commander gave the command: “Ground arms!” Then he gave the command for the platoon to take firing position. The first row took kneeling firing position, while the second row took standing firing position.
After the first row had rested its right knee on the ground, he gave the order: “Load weapons!” The soldiers loaded their weapons and put them on safety, waiting for the next command. The four captors got Kadri Hazbiu and Feçor Shehu out of the car and brought them to the pit. To the left of the firing platoon, a ‘Jeep’-type vehicle was placed, from which seven people got out, all civilians. The ‘Jeep’-type vehicle cast its low beams toward the pit. The two people in black hoods positioned themselves at the edge of the pit, facing the firing platoon.
The seven civilians stood alongside the firing platoon and the platoon commander signed the firing record. About a minute of silence passed until one of the civilians, with a pistol hanging in a shoulder-neck holster, ordered that the two arrestees be unhooded. The two captors removed the black hoods. From the row of soldiers, a stifled cry was heard. One of the soldiers was surprised when he saw Kadri Hazbiu in front of him.
Details of the shooting of Kadri Hazbiu and Feçor Shehu on 10 September 1983
23:15. Two of the seven civilians were filling out the forms required by law when a person is executed, while one of them, with a cassette recorder in hand, approached the condemned men. The civilian with the pistol hanging in a shoulder-neck holster said to them in a sharp tone: “Condemned men. What is your last wish?” More than sixty seconds passed and no one spoke. Nothing stirred. The two condemned men stood frozen before the firing squad.
According to the law, 90 seconds must be allowed for the condemned to state his last wish. But the silence was broken by Kadri Hazbiu. He said in a muffled voice: “Go to hell, all of you.” His voice was very difficult to hear at a distance. It sounded thick, like the voice of a man from whom all his teeth have been pulled. The civilian who was recording the last wish froze, the cassette recorder in his hand, when he heard these five words.
Everyone expected him to say: “I beg for mercy,” so they could record it and take it to the Commander’s office. Kadri Hazbiu’s last wish stunned everyone. No one could orient themselves. The law required that Feçor Shehu also speak. The civilian with the pistol on his arm, who was the prosecutor signing the death of the condemned, said to him in an imposing voice, but which did not have the timbre of his true voice: “Last wish, condemned man Feçor Shehu.” “Go to hell, you too.” Feçor Shehu recognised the prosecutor in front of him. He had proposed that he be transferred from the Prosecutor’s Office of Fier to that of Tirana. Now he did not believe his eyes. One of those to whom he had done well stood before him as the executor of a court decision.
But the 90 seconds for the last wish had elapsed and the two civilian officers taking notes whispered something in the ear of officer M.D. He gave the command for the soldiers to take their weapons off safety. After 30 seconds he gave the command: “Fire!” About 100 7.62 mm bullets were poured over the bodies of Kadri Hazbiu and Feçor Shehu. One in ten cartridges was a tracer. More than 10 bullets had penetrated the bodies of the two executed men.
They crumpled like leaves, first falling to their knees and then to the ground. The platoon of soldiers put their weapons on safety and got into the car. The car left the way it had come. The seven civilians remained facing the two executed men. The prosecutor who was to sign off on their death first drew his “TT” pistol from its holster and with a pull of the barrel back, loaded a cartridge into the chamber.
He first approached Feçor Shehu and delivered the final blow to his left temple. After the colpo di grazia he had given the former Minister of Internal Affairs, he ordered that Kadri Hazbiu, who had fallen face down from the volley of the firing squad, be turned on his side. He also gave him the colpo di grazia, also in the left temple. Then he ordered that the two corpses be bound together with a pair of handcuffs. The captor did so. They were pushed toward the pit and the four gravediggers, who were waiting about 200 metres further on, came and covered the pit.
Early in the morning they covered the grave site with sods of grass and planted some brambles around it. The civilians had completed the map, signed it, and left at the moment the brambles were planted. One of the four gravediggers, in 1994, came to the aid of the families of the two executed men, showing them where they had been buried…!
Clashes between Kadri Hazbiu and Mehmet Shehu over the arrest of the generals: Beqir Balluku, Petrit Dume, Hito Çako and Rrahman Parllaku
“The black night of 5 November 1975 is the night when the three highest military men of the Albanian Army were executed,” said one of our colleagues at the time, in a half-voice. And indeed, “this black night” lasted a full 11 months. It began on 25 November 1974 and ended on 5 November 1974.
On 24 November 1974, at 10:00, Mehmet Shehu entered Enver Hoxha’s office. He was pale and talking to himself. For two hours straight, he stayed in the Commander’s office. They discussed for a very long time and when he came out, his legs trembled and he seemed to walk like a drunk…! Since 4 July 1974, the Politburo had been deeply shaken to its foundations. After the Durrës meeting, where the “Black Theses” were first revealed, the Sixth Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania had condemned them very harshly, as well as the authors of those theses. They were Beqir Balluku, Petrit Dume, Hito Çako and Rrahman Parllaku.
But in truth, they were never “black theses”. On the contrary, they were the truth of the strategy of the Albanian Army in complete encirclement. The four highest military hierarchs had been accused at the Sixth Congress of having created a putschist group in the army. The leadership of the Ministry of Defence had been taken over by Mehmet Shehu. Beqir Balluku was isolated, while Enver Hoxha used the most refined manoeuvre of his life, directed at Hito Çako and Petrit Dume. He promoted them at the very moment he crossed Beqir Balluku, in order to uncover the very foundations of their hostile activity.
The story is very painful. When Enver Hoxha arrested Koçi Xoxe and had him shot, Beqir Balluku and the others applauded. When Teme Sejko was crossed, again they applauded. When Beqir Balluku, Petrit Dume and Hito Çako were arrested, the most scorching lightning bolts directed at them were unleashed by Mehmet Shehu. When it was Mehmet Shehu’s turn, the most scorching lightning bolts were unleashed by Kadri Hazbiu. This kind of very refined strategy of Enver Hoxha made his work very easy. It seems that to kill his closest collaborators, he used the rest of his closest collaborators…!
The night of 25 November 1974
The ink of the decisions of the Sixth Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania was still not dry when Mehmet Shehu, after leaving Enver Hoxha’s office, had to speak at length on 24 November 1974 with Kadri Hazbiu, then Minister of Internal Affairs. He relayed, line by line, the entire content of the conversation with Enver Hoxha and, especially, communicated the two categorical orders. The first order was: that the next day, on 25 November 1974, Beqir Balluku, Hito Çako, Petrit Dume and Rrahman Parllaku were to be arrested. Kadri was stunned for a few minutes, because he had never thought things would go that far. He had to carry out the arrest of Enver Hoxha’s closest man, Beqir Balluku!!
Although he had been the initiator of all the initiatives for punishing the putschist group, he had thought that they would be expelled from the party and interned. When he received the arrest order, he thought for a long time. Mehmet Shehu said to him bluntly: “This is an order from the Commander and it is not debatable. Tomorrow at 10:00, you will report on the implementation of this order. You have very little time to implement it. As far as I know, the State Security has been surveilling and following them very carefully for more than three months. Very little remains for you, only the actual handcuffing.
Once you arrest them, you must keep them in four separate cells in Prison 313. They are to be treated as enemies of the people and the party. They wanted to assassinate the Commander and are the ideators and organisers of the military putsch in the army. You will choose the elite of the Security officers and take a special army platoon to carry out the arrest of Beqir Balluku, Hito Çako, Petrit Dume and Rrahman Parllaku without much noise and with complete precision. Once you arrest them, you must make a very detailed report to the Commander. I was in his office a short while ago and we discussed every detail very carefully.”
This was the content of Mehmet Shehu’s first order to the Minister of Internal Affairs, Kadri Hazbiu. The former minister took all measures to carry out an arrest as quietly as possible, without resistance and in complete secrecy. One hour after the meeting with Mehmet Shehu, he gathered in his office his four closest people and drafted the plan, codenamed “The Black Hand in the Army”. For about three hours, he discussed all the details with his four closest collaborators. To keep the secret, he brought them bread at the Ministry and told them to remain on alert, and that at midnight they would order the implementers of the operation to arrest Beqir Balluku, Hito Çako, Petrit Dume and Rrahman Parllaku.
Mehmet Shehu had reported the details of this operation to Enver Hoxha. But, according to the rule, Kadri Hazbiu also used his own channel to report to the Commander. The Commander, after receiving the same plan reported by two different people, locked himself in his office. He locked himself in at 17:00 and stayed there until late in the evening. He gave the green light to his two subordinates…!”
The painful fate of the families of Petrit Dume and Beqir Balluku after their execution
The Commander’s second order was very shocking. It formulated the expression: “After the arrest of Beqir Balluku, Petrit Dume and Hito Çako, their families are to be urgently interned.” This order left Mehmet Shehu breathless. He relayed the order to the former Minister of Internal Affairs, Kadri Hazbiu. After being informed that the four army putschists had been placed in prison, on 26 November 1974, the Democratic Front of Neighbourhood No. 8 of Tirana was ordered to carry out the internment of the members of the Balluku family and the family of Petrit Dume.
The knock on Petrit Dume’s house
Petrit Dume’s villa was located in the centre of the Bllok, at the northern corner of the “11 Janari” school. The villa still exists today. The two-storey villa was among the most preferred villas in the Bllok. Inside the villa were Petrit Dume’s wife and three daughters, anxiously following the developments of the time concerning their father and his comrades, now considered putschists by the communist regime they had served for a long time. Today, a ten-storey building stands next to the villa.
At the entrance to the villa, at 05:00 in the morning of 26 November 1974, a “ZIS”-type car with Lushnja licence plates was parked. Three Security officers in civilian clothes, a uniformed police officer, a representative of the Neighbourhood Democratic Front, and a representative from the Executive Committee of Tirana knocked on the door. At the door came Vera Dume, Petrit Dume’s daughter, who later died accidentally from the explosion of a car bomb at the former “VEFA” supermarket in Tirana in 1996. They told her that her mother had to come out and meet the group of civilians (Security officers). The family, which had been lamenting the arrest of General Petrit Dume for more than 24 hours, now experienced another drama.
As soon as Petrit Dume’s wife came to the door of the villa, one of the civilians handed her a paper: within two hours, they had to be ready, because at 07:00 in the morning they had to travel in the car waiting at the door. She fainted. She could not fully read the letter bearing the seal of the Chairman of Internment-Deportations of Tirana for declassed families and enemies of the people. Petrit Dume’s wife did not regain consciousness for nearly an hour.
During this time, the three civilians had begun loading the cars, taking out all personal belongings and clothes of the Dume family. They told them to take even the little food they had in the cupboard, and then not to take anything else. All the furniture was to be left untouched. In less than two hours, the operation was over. Loaded onto the car were a handful of clothes and personal items of the wife and three daughters of Petrit Dume, while in the cab with the driver sat two civilians, who were also the instructors of Deportation-Internment.
At 07:00 in the morning, the car set off for the village of Grabian near Lushnja. The car was escorted all the way by a “Jeep” (the off-road vehicle of the time) from the Tirana Department of Internal Affairs. After three hours of travel, the family was settled in a completely uninhabitable house in Grabian, Lushnja, where they would live until they escaped internment only in 1990. The greatest lightning bolts fell upon this family, which bore no fault whatsoever, while in the Commander’s reports it was written that the family lived in unprecedented luxury, and above all, from Enver Hoxha’s mouth came the accusation: “Petrit Dume’s wife bathed in milk instead of water.”
After the settlement in the Grabian barracks, Mehmet Shehu on one side and Kadri Hazbiu on the other immediately made their reports, which were handed to the Commander, on the implementation of Operation “Charlie”. It was given this name because of the name of Petrit Dume’s horse. The general had used a personal horse with that name. As soon as Petrit Dume’s family left the villa, the newest member of the government, Tefta Cani, Minister of Education and Culture, was immediately settled in the house, thus becoming the newest part of the Bllok.”/Memorie.al
