From Prof. Dr. Bardhyl Çipi
Part Five
Prof. Çipi: “I’ll tell you about the cases when I was called to perform forensic examinations of persons killed at the border, attempting to flee Albania!”
SCIENTIFIC PROOF OF STRIKING DEATHS
(Public figures, victims of the dictatorship, and other events)
Memorie.al / Bardhyl Çipi, one of the most experienced specialists in our country in the field of Forensic Medicine and Bioethics, their teaching, and the training of new forensic experts. Some of his patients include: victims killed at the border while attempting to escape the communist dictatorship, but who were aided by their faithful dog in finding their hidden corpse, the interned woman who killed herself out of despair, citizens of Kosovo killed by Serbs because they sought to live free, not to be humiliated and tortured by them, inhabitants who lived 1500 years ago in Albania, a University of Tirana professor who was robbed and murdered, etc. A book about death and the scientific evidence for uncovering its various types: murder, suicide, those stimulated and forced by the communist regime, murders and genocide against Albanians by their neighbors, fresh or decomposed and skeletonized corpses. Documents of the deaths of prominent figures: Kennedy, Lincoln, Napoleon, Lenin, Trotsky, etc., and other events of the deaths of ordinary people. Knowledge about the changes that occur after death and the examination of corpses in the world and in our country, from the historical, ethical, forensic, and legal perspectives. Some of his recent books are: “Manual of Forensic Medicine” (2015), “Bioethics in Albania nowadays” (2016), “Albanian Transition in the Loupe of Forensic Medicine” (2018), “Forensic Medicine and Criminalistics” (2020).
Crimes: Murders, Suicides, and Others against Persons Persecuted by the Communist Regime
These have been numerous, as is resulting from the documents that have emerged and the testimonies of those who suffered and were unjustly sentenced during the time of this fierce dictatorship. A part of them have been verified with scientific evidence, thanks to the forensic examinations performed, but there are many others, proven by numerous documents and testimonies.
After the 1990s, when the communist regime was overthrown, the scientific proving of these bitter events began in an organized manner. In truth, in a part of these political murders or suicides, forensic and criminalistics examinations were performed even when they occurred.
I was young in the practice of forensic medicine during that period and participated mainly in the forensic expertise of victims of ordinary crimes, which were numerous, but kept secret and not publicly announced, as is done today.
I performed these examinations mostly for the city of Tirana and its district and less for other areas of our country; they were usually carried out by their forensic doctors, who were in every district of our country.
During those years, I performed a large number of forensic examinations in Tirana and went to most of the villages in its district to perform autopsies of the many victims of murders, suicides, accidents, or sudden deaths, all of which were unrelated to political persecution.
But during those years, I also participated in the resolution of the forensic aspects of some events with a political nature.
Here are those cases:
I will begin this presentation with a very special event that occurred to me in 1986. At that time, the Forensic Medicine service was located in a building of the former Hospital No. 2 (Surgery), where the QSUT consultations are located today. The morgue was located in the former Hospital No. 1, where it is today, but at that time, it was under the dependence of Pathological Anatomy, which performed autopsies of hospital deaths there. After the 2000s, forensic medicine was placed in the morgue building.
Almost every morning, we forensic doctors would go from our offices in the former Hospital No. 2 to the morgue, in the former Hospital No. 1, to perform autopsies on forensic cases. The event I want to recount happened on a cold winter day. As soon as I arrived at work, early in the morning, I was called by phone by the head of the morgue and left for there.
The one who had just arrived also accompanied me immediately to the autopsy room. This room was more or less the same as it is today, but now it has modern equipment. What caught my eye was a dog, not very large, standing on the floor of the room, whimpering incessantly and absolutely refusing to leave. On the nearby autopsy table lay the corpse of a person killed by a firearm, which I was going to examine.
The morgue staff told me that the dog had gotten off the back of a truck with the corpse when they brought it the night before, to place it in the morgue, and secretly, taking advantage of the darkness of the night, it had entered the autopsy room, to not be separated from the lifeless body of its master.
As I was informed later, the victim, who lived in Tirana, had been convicted due to political beliefs against the regime and for this had been interned in the Biza area of Martanesh. On one of the days of that winter, he left the place of internment without permission and walked through the mountains, accompanied by his faithful dog; he reached the Qafë e Thanës area, to cross the Albanian-Yugoslav border.
Unfortunately for him, when he approached the border, he was detected by one of the border guards in winter clothing, equipped with skis, which persistently pursued him for many kilometers and finally shot him from a distance in the back, leaving him dead on the spot.
At that time, the investigator (today the judicial police officer or prosecutor) also came, who had been at the crime scene near the border, to inspect the scene and take the corpse to the Tirana morgue.
The investigator also had the duty to include the description of the corpse in the document he would fill out in this case, called the minutes of the crime scene inspection, which the forensic doctor would now dictate to him in the morgue.
I want to clarify that in many cases, when the description of the corpse cannot be made at the scene, for various reasons, as may have happened in this event, this action will be performed in the morgue.
I also deem it appropriate to add that the duty of forensic medicine is the examination of the corpse and its autopsy, while the investigator (judicial police officer) has the responsibility to take and transport the corpse to the morgue, to provide the forensic doctor with the best conditions for performing the autopsy; after this, he gives the family permission to bury it.
During the communist regime, when there were cases of deaths of prisoners, convicts, and internees for political reasons, the investigator ordered that the corpse not be given to the family but be buried in unknown places.
In the case I am recounting, what surprised and disgusted me was the satisfaction the investigator felt for this murder, which he expressed by proudly and loudly boasting, so that all the morgue staff and other persons present could hear, about the bravery shown by the border guard, who, in the very bad weather conditions and difficult terrain covered by ice and snow, persistently pursued him for a very long time, until he killed the “traitor to the homeland”; “he should be declared a hero,” he concluded.
All the people around listened to him in silence. A truly moving situation was created for me, in this environment around this innocent victim, for whom only his dog was crying, inseparable from its master, even though he was now dead.
I never found out what happened to the dog, but sometime later, after the 1990s, the story of this innocent victim and his faithful dog came immediately to mind when I met his brother, who wanted to find the victim’s body.
When I told him the story with the dog, he leaped up, because he immediately understood that this corpse must be his brother’s; before he was interned, he had a faithful dog that never left him, wherever he went. “That dog must have been the one that was in the morgue near my brother’s corpse,” he told me.
After many searches, he finally discovered that his brother’s corpse must be in a grave with a false name, in the Shtish Tufinë cemetery in Tirana. I immediately went there to participate in the exhumation and then to inspect the corpse, which was skeletonized.
I compared the data from its examination with those of the forensic report of the autopsy I had performed in 1986, one day after the victim’s murder. In the end, I was able to accurately determine the identity of this innocent victim. After this, a reburial ceremony was performed by the family.
So, the dog, this faithful animal, helped its master in a way even after death, in the discovery of his corpse, buried in a hidden place, with the intention that it would never be found.
The second case, in September 1982, concerns what was called the “Xhevdet Mustafa Gang,” which had entered our country clandestinely, through the coastline of the Divjakë area of the Lushnjë district. Its purpose was to go to Tirana, to kill the communist dictator and overthrow his regime.
On the way to Tirana, it was discovered and pursued by the Police and Ministry of Interior forces. Although it continued its way towards the Rrogozhinë train station, killing several people, including a policeman, as far as I remember, it was finally surrounded and annihilated.
The two corpses from this event, sent to the Tirana morgue, belonged to Sabaudin Haznedari (the group’s leader), who fled Albania in 1950, and Xhevdet Mustafa, who fled Albania in 1964.
When I entered the autopsy room of the Tirana morgue that day, their corpses were lying on the two tables of this room. As far as I remember, the corpse of Xhevdet Mustafa, large and muscular, showed numerous firearm wound holes, scattered in different parts of the body.
I only examined the corpse of Sabaudin Haznedari, on whose body there was only one firearm wound, with the entry hole in the front and upper part of the head and the exit hole in the shoulder area. This showed that the fatal projectile had a downward direction in the head and body, from above.
This finding actually matched the position the victim had at the moment of the murder. He was semi-lying obliquely, inside a bunker (fireplace), near the Rrogozhinë train station, with his face at the loophole (window) of the bunker.
After the end of the forensic examination, the corpses were placed in one of the morgue refrigerators, where they were kept for a long time, about a month, before their burial was allowed.
Another event occurred in Sarandë, in September 1984, where I, together with the forensic doctor of that city, examined in the city morgue the corpse of a young man from Tirana, dissatisfied with the communist regime, who had made an attempt to escape by swimming towards the Greek island of Corfu.
His corpse was discovered by fishermen who found it caught in their fishing nets. It belonged to a male person, of young age, wearing a swimsuit and carrying an Albanian passport. In fact, all those who attempted or managed to flee abroad also took identification documents, passports, etc., with them.
From the autopsy, it was determined that the death was caused by drowning. Due to decomposition and post-mortem damage to the face, it could not be confirmed whether this corpse certainly belonged to the person in the passport. For this reason, the identification methods of photographic superimposition and the graphic algorithm method were also used in the expertise for the identification of this case. They confirmed that this corpse belonged to this young man from Tirana.
During this period, I also remember several other cases of this nature examined by me. Two of them belonged to two victims who had committed suicide, by jumping from a height and self-hanging, due to the despair and great shock caused by the arrest and imprisonment of their family members, ministers of the communist state, but who were accused as collaborators of Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu, who was declared, after his death, based on fabricated evidence, as an enemy of the regime.
A final case was that of an interned woman in one of the villages of the Lushnjë district, together with her husband and children, who killed herself by hanging. She apparently did this, in addition to the unbearable conditions of life in internment, also out of the despair and shock she suffered from the sudden death of her husband, who was suspected of having been poisoned.
Post-1990 Exhumations and Forced Disappearance
After the 1990s, with the fall of the communist regime, searches immediately began for the discovery of the corpses of the persons executed during its time and secretly buried.
According to the Institute of Studies on Communist Crimes and Consequences (ISKK), in the period 1944 – 1991, there were over 6000 corpses buried in unknown places, belonging to persons executed with or without trial, political prisoners, sentenced to death due to their beliefs against the regime and the opposition they had shown to it. This group also included victims who had been leaders of the regime, but convicted by it on false charges.
A part of them belonged to prisoners or internees who died in prisons or labor camps, as a result of torture, or suicides due to mistreatment, or due to diseases. Finally, these cases also included the corpses of persons sentenced to death for ordinary crimes (mainly those who had committed murder).
So, in all these cases, the communist regime, in flagrant violation of human rights, used what is called “forced disappearance” as an instrument to exercise social and political control, especially in cases where regular legal sentencing processes had not been applied, but also to make it impossible to discover the burial place, for fear that the graves of the regime’s persecuted would not turn into pilgrimage sites in the future to honor these victims.
This method of operation was not even used during the middle Ages, where the bodies of dangerous criminals who had committed many murders, after their execution, were returned to their families for burial. Even in the USA, the body of a person sentenced to death is given to the family for burial; if they refuse, his body will rest in the prison cemetery.
The use of the “forced disappearance” model was justified at that time by the communist regime with the argument that the victim’s body is not returned to the family because it will remain at the disposal of the state, even after death. In fact, the communist regime had adopted this method of operation from the Soviet Union and other communist countries, where the corpses of executed criminals or political dissidents were not given to their families but were buried anonymously or in unknown places. Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
