Who Handed Vlora Hyseni Her Security Clearance?

By Filip Çakuli

There is a question hanging in the corridors of the Albanian state today, and no one dares to ask it out loud:

Who handed Vlora Hyseni her security clearance?

Not the driver’s license. Not the health certificate.

Because this woman was not made the head of an office that handles embassy tenders. She was made the director of SHISH, the institution that, in principle, is supposed to know even what you don’t know you know.

And her Albanian story began in a way that looks even more interesting today.

In Kosovo, Hyseni had been in the intelligence structures and had even served as deputy director of the KIA. In June 2021, she left the post. The reason was never made public. Two months later, in Albania, Edi Rama took her on as his advisor for security affairs. In 2023, he proposed her to head SHISH. The President decreed it.

In Albania: security advisor.

A little later: head of SHISH.

This is not a career. This is a cross-border transfer of security.

And now, five years later, a tiny, very tiny question emerges: So back then, what did Albanians know that Kosovars didn’t? Or what did Kosovars not know that Albanians did? Or, even worse: did anyone know anything?

Because when it comes to the head of a secret service, a CV is not enough. Something else is needed: the security clearance.

For in Albania you can vet a citizen to grant a permit, a tender, a license or a job in the administration.

But to head SHISH?

Apparently all you need is to have crossed the border from Kosovo.

From Rama’s advisor to SHISH chief

There is nothing illegal in itself about a prime minister appointing his advisor to another post. But here we have a case that today demands public explanations.

A person who had left the leadership structure of Kosovo’s intelligence, without the reason being made public, moves very quickly to the side of the Albanian prime minister as a security advisor.

Then she becomes the director of SHISH.

And now SPAK is investigating her precisely for matters related to supporting the perpetrator of a crime and disclosing secret acts or data.

But why did SPAK rush to arrest her? Why didn’t it wait for her to come to Albania? The urgency of making the arrest public speaks of a great distress for the Special Prosecution. For even Ilir Meta, former president, former prime minister, former Speaker of Parliament, was arrested in a shameful manner, but SPAK washed its hands and passed the ball to the police…

These are SPAK’s charges, not guilt proven by a final court decision.

Here the scenario becomes so absurd that even a comedy writer would return it:

— Who vetted her for security?

— Well, who was running SHISH?

— Well, who was vetting Vlora?

Ah, good. Now we understand everything.

On September 22 happened what no one would have written in an ordinary institutional script.

The acting director of SHISH is placed under house arrest and suspended from duty.

The problem is that at that moment she was not at home. She was in Baku. She was participating in an international forum on the fight against terrorism, attended by representatives of many countries. The measure could not be executed immediately because she was outside Albania. She then returned and surrendered to the Albanian authorities at the Kosovo–Albania border.

Imagine the hall in Baku. Vlora rises to speak:

— Dear colleagues, today we will talk about international cooperation against crime…

— We have received some information from Albania.

— Please step outside for a moment.

— Because you are wanted for… information.

At a conference on secret information, the head of the Albanian secret service walks out over an Albanian secret information.

This is institutional comedy.

Here is the question that should not be asked hysterically, but must be asked:

When the head of the intelligence service of a NATO member country is placed under investigation for charges related precisely to state secrets, how is this managed with partner services?

Are they informed? Are they consulted? Is there a protocol? Is there coordination? Are communication channels changed immediately? Who makes the decision? And above all: who controls the controller?

Security expert Xhavit Shala has raised precisely the concern about the impact such a case could have on SHISH’s relations with partner services, and has argued that different institutional management, for example removal from duty before procedural actions, would have avoided part of this reputational blow.

So the issue is not just: “Did or did not Vlora Hyseni do something.” The court will decide that.

The political and institutional question is another: How did a person who had left the leadership of Kosovo’s intelligence without a public explanation of the reason manage, within two years, to go from being the Albanian prime minister’s advisor to the top of SHISH?

And another question: Who signed the security clearance?

Albania has invented a new procedure. In normal countries, when the head of a secret service falls under serious suspicion, the institution must be protected from the crisis itself.

In Albania we have seen another scenario: the SHISH chief under investigation, still in office, outside the country, SPAK issues the measure, the prime minister dismisses her, the president decrees, and the director returns at the border.

The Albanian state no longer needs TV series. It has the pace of Netflix. Only this series has one problem:

And the coming episodes may be even more interesting, because Agasi’s phone and the materials seized by SPAK have been reported as part of the evidence that expanded the investigation.

So today Albania has two questions. One is legal: What did Vlora Hyseni do?

The other is institutional: How did Vlora Hyseni become the head of SHISH?

The first will be answered by the court. The second must be answered by the state.

Because if tomorrow it turns out the security clearance was in order, the question becomes even bigger:

And if the clearance was not in order… then we have an even bigger problem.

Because it’s not just the SHISH chief who failed us. It’s also the one who told her: “You are cleared for security.”