From Besim Ndregjoni

GOODBYE TO THE SON OF THE KING OF GJAKOVO, SKENDER HALUCA!

The Nationwide Union for the Integration of Political Prisoners and Persecuted of Albania received with deep shock the news of the passing of Judge, intellectual, and former political prisoner of the communist regime, Skënder Haluca.

Skënder Haluca belongs to those resistance fighters of the 80s who, as a high school student, but also as the son of Muharrem Haluca, who was a political prisoner who died from torture in the infamous political prison of Burrel, a prison at the entrance of which the communist dictatorship had written:

"Here they call him Burrel, he enters and doesn't leave!" He was among the first to disagree with the dictatorship's propaganda, and why he was banned from education as the son of a "class enemy!"

The state security of the dictatorship prepared his file as the son of a political prisoner who had changed his life in the political prison of Burrel, and today he does not have a grave! At the most beautiful age of his youth where he enjoyed life, age, the beautiful nature of the mountains of Malsia Gjakova, they arrested him with a ridiculous and tragic accusation, Accused of having participated in the assassination attempt against the last communist dictator Ramiz Ali when he had visited Tropoja, 6 months before they arrested Skënder with his cousin Isuf Haluca!

When Southeastern Europe was tearing down the ideological walls erected by totalitarian systems, the communist regime of Ramiz Ali continued the death penalty against young Albanians without any legal basis or facts, only with falsified files of the executioners who had reduced this society to an ideological robot, stripping it of morality and human feelings.

Skënder, following in the footsteps of his brave and invincible father against the executioners, faced the inhuman tortures of that bloody regime with bravery and stoicism. The decisions of the communist courts of three levels sentenced Skënder to execution, but the Presidium of the People's Assembly commuted the sentence from execution to life imprisonment. And so God willed that Skënder would manage to see the overthrow of the formal communist system in the 90s. After his release from prison, he would turn to education, where he graduated from the Faculty of Law and began working at the Court of Tirana, where he gave his contribution, but also a lesson for the justice of the 90s, that he would not participate in the trial of the dictator Ramiz Ali, not as Ramiz Ali's party trumpeted, that Ramiz Ali spared his life, but the code of criminal procedure did not allow him to participate.

The black year of 1997 came, he refused to become a tool of the party that had condemned him, but he strongly condemned the revolution of communists turned socialists for disrupting the balance of society by bringing to power a party that had condemned him as a political opponent.

After the return to normalcy in politics in 2005, he returned to the position of judge and for good work and not at all with a sense of revenge, he took over the Vlora Court until 2021 when the Albanian Communist Party invented a vetting system, just to remove from justice those who had been opponents of the criminal communist regime!

And he began the profession of Lawyer until the last minutes of his life.

Dear Skënder, you left this life at a time when Albania is going through the most difficult moments from the return of the sons of the executioners of your sentence, the loss of your father's life, your fellow sufferers who went through the ordeal of Burrel, Spaç, Qaf-Bar and the concentration camps of the loss of human lives.

You are leaving Albania at a moment when Albanian Youth has taken on the task of building the "new Albania". There were unforgettable moments when you told me on the boulevard on a night of protest that what was not done in the 90s, I am sure will be done now.
The Union of Political Prisoners lost a devoted member, Justice lost an honest judge, the family lost their husband, the daughter their beloved father, Tropoja her anti-communist son.

Farewell, my friend, my fellow sufferer, your legacy and your resistance for a new Albania will be realized in the face of the sons of the executioners who have taken the freedom of Albanians hostage.

Rest in peace in your land, in your homeland that you loved so much!

Besim Mendregioni

President of the Union of Political Prisoners and Persecuted.