Who Leaks the Secrets of the Investigation Into the Leaking of Secrets?

By Marenglen Kasmi

The regime also had its “people’s trial”, in which the judicial process was accompanied by the public unmasking of the accused.

Looking at what is happening today with several high-profile criminal cases, I am no longer so sure we have fully left these practices behind. Of course, there are no more cooperativists. But we have plenty of others who perform this role perfectly well day and night — at café tables, in television studios, and on news portals. So the “people’s investigation” goes on. Then comes the “people’s trial”.

But where do all these materials come from, the ones presented as part of the investigative file? How do they reach journalists? Or are they merely “bones” thrown to a hungry public to feed precisely this “people’s investigation and trial”?

The case of Vlora Hyseni is interesting precisely for this reason. The dismissed head of SHISH is under investigation by SPAK, among other things for “disclosing classified acts or data”. The charge is serious, and if proven, the liability is equally serious. Meanwhile, communications, statements and details presented as parts of the investigative file are surfacing in the media.

Moreover, “loose tongues” say it is not over yet. Other very serious things will come out, and in October there will be more SPAK arrests — right in time for “Enver’s month”. How they know what SPAK will uncover and whom it will arrest next month is one of those mysteries that only the “people’s investigation” knows how to solve.

These developments are paradoxical: the leaking of secrets is being investigated from the very institution that guards the state’s secrets, while information from the investigation into the disclosure of those secrets is surfacing in public. So who is leaking the secrets of the investigation into the leaking of secrets?

I have no intention of pinning this on SPAK. We have no evidence of where the investigative materials came from, and other people may have become familiar with them during the proceedings. Indeed, before we speak of a leaked investigative secret, we must know whether what is being published is authentic at all.

Still, we have a precedent. In December 2023, when SkyECC communications surfaced in the media, SPAK verified the materials and opened a criminal proceeding for “disclosure of classified acts or data”. So we have a standard set by SPAK itself.

I trust SPAK. I consider it a serious and professional institution. That is why, as long as no investigation into the leaking of materials in the Hyseni case has been made public, the question naturally arises: could it be that what has been presented to us for days as wiretaps, communications and parts of SPAK’s file is not authentic?

It would be good to know. Because if they are not authentic, then we have another problem: materials that are not part of SPAK’s file are being presented to the public as such. But if they are authentic and still protected by investigative secrecy, someone leaked them. Then why are we not seeing the same reaction from SPAK? Or is it harder this time to find where the secrets are leaking from?

Meanwhile the people’s investigation and trial carry on with their work. “The state has fallen”, shouts the opposition. All kinds of conspiracies are put into circulation. After all, we have experience with the “mass line”.

A criminal file is not a television series, like those evening Turkish soap operas. It contains information that must be verified and materials that make sense only when seen as a whole. When only a few fragments leak out of it, the public forms a picture of the case that may be completely different from what will later be confronted in court.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, the fault is not the journalists’. Journalism seeks information and, when it gets it, publishes it. You can ask a journalist to verify the source and present the material responsibly. But when a material that is supposed to be protected ends up in a newsroom, the first question is not why the journalist published it, but who gave it to them.

In the Hyseni case this carries even more weight. We are dealing with the head of the State Intelligence Service and an investigation that concerns precisely classified information. If SPAK’s suspicions are proven, the liability is grave. The position she held not only does not shield her from the law, but makes the responsibility for the information entrusted to her even greater. But then let us be consistent about investigative secrecy as well.

What strikes me is that SPAK seems to have grown accustomed to this coexistence. The official investigation is conducted at the prosecutor’s office, while the “people’s investigation” is conducted everywhere and by everyone. In one, evidence is collected; in the other, the story is built from fragments presented as having come from SPAK’s investigative files.

It even seems that SPAK itself is enjoying this spectacle. Or at least, it is not very bothered by it. I am not saying SPAK leaks the materials itself, as I have no evidence for that. Could its silence mean that this suits it, or that the leaked materials are not authentic? That is also how it can be read, as long as we have not seen the same reaction that SPAK has shown it knows how to make when it deems it necessary.

A society in a democratic country needs neither the “mass line” nor people’s investigators and judges. It needs justice institutions that work responsibly — even though they have not yet received last month’s salaries — and that take care that their investigations are not conducted in parallel in television studios, with materials claimed to come from their investigative files.

Otherwise, we have already done the people’s investigation and trial.

Done!