TIRANA, August 22 – “All institutions have acted on time and properly”. This was the quintessence of the media interview of the Minister of Defense, Niko Peleshi, who along with the Interior Minister, Bledi Cuci, did not find any faults with the performance of their institutions regarding the incidents in two military objects in Gramsh and Polican in southern Albania.
A military guard was attacked in the premises of the military plant in Gramsh by a suspected Russian spy on Sunday, who was detained together with two other collaborators, another Russian and a Ukrainian. According to the police announcement on Monday, they will be kept in jail as the probe has started and first evidence shows that their equipment led them to believe that their mission was espionage.
“I confirm to you that we are responsible and very serious in dealing with the last event of Gramsh, just as each of us should be protected from exaggerations or political or media speculations of other events, which may not be called events,” Peleshi said. He revealed that this was the third incident of this kind. Two previous ones happened in Mjekes and the mechanical plant of Polican.
“Currently, we do not have military industries, and they (the military objects in question) are not active,” confirmed the Defense Minister.
“However far from the exaggerations of politics, the event in Gramsh is being treated seriously by us because of the element of violence,” said Peleshi who added that its target might have been to draw attention from another scenario.
He did not specify what kind of scenario he had in mind.
The minister noted that “we are dealing with 3 foreigners with Russian and Ukrainian passports who had been in our country for many days and were also in other areas.”
Peleshi revealed that there are more than 1,000 ‘military properties’ throughout Albania and many of them do not have any activity, but are guarded.
In the meantime, it is announced that the four Czechs who were detained in Polican were released on Monday. Apparently, their evidence that they were tourists was found sufficient to declare them not involved in espionage. /Argumentum.al
