Bashkim Gazidede

Who was Bashkim Gazidede?

Bashkim Gazidede - - Albanian Mathematician, author, politician and a controversial chief intelligence agent.

He was born Bashkim Shehu to Osman Shehu, a sheh, an Albanian Muslim clergyman, nationalist and outspoken anticommunist from Dibra, east Albania in the border with Macedonia. He therefore has been enduring heavy persecutions and humiliations during communism. This might be the reason why all of his Shehu kinship changed the family name into Gazidede. Gazidede himself has been a renowned lifelong Muslim devotee.

Despite all deprivation and the fact that "enemies of the people" were by law prohibited education past high school, he somehow managed to study in the Luigj Gurakuqi University of Shkodra and graduated in Mathematics from the University of Tirana.

In the years 1984 - 1992 he was an expert on algebra and mathematics lecturer at the University of Tirana. In 1991 he affiliated with the Association of Muslim Intellectuals. In the same year he ran for the first time in parliamentary elections from a list of the Democratic Party of Albania, but he obtained the mandate from the constituency of Dibra only in the next elections in 1992. In the years 1992-1997, during the rule of Sali Berisha he directed the National Intelligence Service, created after the disbanding of Sigurimi, the infamous communist Intelligence Service. He had no previous experience in the management of the intelligence services. In one of the first interviews he announced the removal of 60% of the personnel coming from the former communist secret service. In June 1996 he was accused of arrest and torture of opposition activists, protesting against the government of the Democratic Party of Albania. During the riots that marred Albania in the Spring of 1997 because of the failure of Ponzi schemes, Gazidede led an unsuccessful operation to restore public order. Speaking in a parliamentary questioning session he accused the authorities of Greece, the CIA and the U.S. embassy in Tirana for the creation of the military escalation in the south of the country. He remarkably praised the Greek minority of Albania for non-involvement in the events.