Sigurimi

Directorate of State Security

Drejtoria e Sigurimit të Shtetit
Agency overview
Formed	December 1944
Dissolved	July 1991
Superseding agency	National Information Service
Headquarters	Tirana, People's Socialist Republic of Albania
Motto	Për popullin, me popullin ("For the people, with the people")
Parent agency	Ministry of Internal Affairs; People's Socialist Republic of Albania

The Directorate of State Security (Albanian: Drejtoria e Sigurimit të Shtetit), commonly known as the Sigurimi (lit. 'Security'), was the state security, intelligence and secret police service of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania. It operated as part of the communist system from the end of the Second World War until 1991, when Albania began dismantling its one-party state.

Although formally charged with protecting state security, the Sigurimi functioned in practice as the political police of the Party of Labour of Albania. It monitored society, identified and pursued people labelled as "enemies" of the regime, investigated political offences, maintained informant networks, censored information, protected the communist leadership and collected foreign intelligence. The Authority for Information on Former State Security Documents has described the State Security as a mechanism of "terror, surveillance and repression" during Albania's communist dictatorship.

The Sigurimi is central to Albania's post-communist debates about transitional justice, lustration and access to secret-police files. After years of political dispute, Law No. 45/2015 created a legal framework for access to former State Security documents and established the AIDSSH, which began functioning in 2016–2017.

History

Origins and consolidation

Historians and Albanian archival institutions give different dates for the institutional origins of the Sigurimi. Albanian historian Kastriot Dervishi has placed the creation of the State Security organs in December 1944, while a manual prepared for access to former State Security files states that the service originated in the wartime People's Protection structures and officially began operating on 14 December 1944. Historian Robert Elsie traced the organisational roots of Albania's communist security apparatus to 1943, during the wartime communist-led partisan movement.

The first post-war security structures were built from reliable communist partisans and came under the control of the new communist government. In the early post-war period they helped the leadership around Enver Hoxha consolidate power, suppress non-communist opponents and eliminate rival currents within the communist movement. The service later came under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, alongside the People's Police and other internal-security bodies.

In August 1946, according to AIDSSH material, the People's Defence Directorate was renamed the Directorate of State Security, or State Security, and placed under the Ministry of the Interior. Subsequent administrative reorganisations altered its structure several times until 1991, but its basic function as the regime's political-security apparatus remained constant.

Role under Enver Hoxha

The Sigurimi operated in a political system in which the Party of Labour of Albania held a constitutional monopoly of power and dissent was criminalised. Under Hoxha and later Ramiz Alia, Albania's communist state restricted religious practice, private property, emigration, political pluralism, independent publishing and contact with the outside world. Human Rights Watch later described resistance to Hoxha's rule as being met with internal exile, long-term imprisonment and execution.

The Sigurimi investigated suspected ideological deviation, foreign contacts, attempted escape, religious activity, suspected "agitation and propaganda", alleged espionage and opposition to the communist order. It also monitored members of the ruling party, state administration, military and cultural institutions. During successive breaks with Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and China, the security apparatus helped carry out internal purges against officials accused of disloyalty or foreign alignment.

Late communist period and dissolution

By the late 1980s the Sigurimi remained one of the main coercive institutions of the state. A U.S. Library of Congress country study described the service as a separate directorate within the Ministry of Internal Affairs and estimated that it had around 10,000 officers, with about 2,500 assigned to the People's Army. The same source stated that almost all serving Sigurimi personnel were believed to be members of the Party of Labour, reflecting the importance placed on political reliability.

After the first pluralist elections of 1991, the communist-dominated People's Assembly abolished the Ministry of Internal Affairs and reorganised internal-security institutions. In July 1991 the legislature abolished the Sigurimi and created the National Information Service, commonly known as SHIK or NIS, in its place. Western observers at the time noted that it was unclear how far the new service differed from its predecessor, because some personnel and structures were believed to have continued from the Sigurimi into the new organisation.

Activities

Surveillance and political policing

The Sigurimi's main task was to protect the communist political order. It used surveillance, informants, interrogation, prosecution files and administrative pressure to identify and neutralise people treated as hostile to the party-state. Its records include information on political trials, persecution, psychological and physical torture, killings, enforced disappearances, career exclusion and the use of regular citizens, officials and others as informants, sometimes through coercion or compromise material.

AIDSSH cautions that the records should be read critically: they are authentic documents of the security apparatus, but they were produced from the point of view of an ideologically indoctrinated secret-police service that interpreted ordinary rights such as speech, association and movement through the language of "enemy" activity and criminality.

Informant networks

The Sigurimi relied on secret collaborators, party activists, local officials and ordinary citizens to provide information. Under Law No. 45/2015, a "collaborator of former State Security" is defined as a person proven to have secretly cooperated with the former State Security organs in activities of a political nature, whether through documents, records, folders or card indexes made available by the former State Security.

The use of informants has remained one of the most sensitive aspects of Albania's communist past. The files often contain personal data collected without the knowledge of the people concerned, and AIDSSH guidance warns journalists and researchers to avoid reproducing communist-era narratives uncritically or damaging the dignity of victims and third parties.

Counterintelligence and foreign intelligence

The Sigurimi had domestic counterintelligence functions and foreign-intelligence responsibilities. Its counterintelligence work focused on detecting foreign intelligence operations and suppressing domestic movements or individuals portrayed as linked to hostile foreign powers. Its foreign-intelligence section used official cover positions, including diplomatic missions, trade offices and cultural activities, to gather information on foreign capabilities and intentions affecting Albania's security.

During the early Cold War, Western governments and Albanian émigré groups attempted to support resistance operations against the communist regime, including Operation Valuable. These operations were defeated in part because of the effectiveness of Albanian and allied communist intelligence penetration, and because the Sigurimi was able to identify and neutralise infiltrated groups.

Censorship and social control

The Sigurimi worked alongside party and state structures responsible for censorship, propaganda and ideological education. It monitored publishing, broadcasting, cultural organisations, schools, religious communities, workplaces and private communications. The service's role was not limited to formal criminal investigations; it also contributed to administrative punishment, dismissals, exclusion from education and employment, internal exile and broader social pressure against families labelled politically unreliable.

Organisation

Former political prison in Gjirokastër.

Museum of Leaves in Tirana, housed in a building once used for surveillance activities.

The Sigurimi had a national headquarters in Tirana and branches in Albania's districts. According to AIDSSH, it was divided into sectors covering areas such as counterintelligence, combating anti-revolutionary organisations and groups, protection of the socialist economy, operational records, surveillance and control of diplomatic missions, investigation, cryptography and secretariat services.

A U.S. Library of Congress country study described the Sigurimi as one of several security organisations under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, together with the Frontier Guards and the People's Police. Unlike ordinary policing, the Sigurimi's primary function was to protect the party and government system and to suppress deviations from communist ideology.

The service included units responsible for:

• political surveillance and control;
• internal security and counterintelligence;
• foreign intelligence;
• operational records and archives;
• censorship and communications monitoring;
• prison, internment and political re-education functions;
• physical protection of party and state leaders.

Prisons, internment and repression

The Sigurimi operated within a broader system of communist repression that included political trials, prisons, labour camps, internment and deportation. It did not control all elements of the prison system directly, but it played a major role in investigations, surveillance of prisoners, assessments of political danger and the production of files used against individuals and families.

Albanian and international memory institutions have documented large numbers of political prisoners, internees, executed persons and people who died in detention or forced labour. A 2021 report prepared with the support of the International Commission on Missing Persons stated that Albanian institutions possessed records of many political prisoners executed following court proceedings and sentencing, and of another 987 political prisoners who died from various causes in prisons and detention centres. AIDSSH and other Albanian memory institutions have also worked on identifying missing persons and recovering remains from the communist period.

Files, lustration and transitional justice

Opening of the files

In the years after 1991, the fate of the Sigurimi files was politically contested. Attempts to open or use the files were linked to wider debates about lustration, public-office vetting, victims' rights and political manipulation of communist-era records. Critics argued that Albania began confronting its secret-police archive later than many other former communist states and that many files had already been destroyed.

In 2008 the Albanian parliament discussed opening the Sigurimi files, but the proposal was contested by the Socialist Party of Albania. In 2015, Albania adopted Law No. 45/2015, which established rules for collecting, administering and using documents of the former State Security, and for giving affected persons and institutions access to information. According to a transitional-justice resource, Albania was the last former communist country in Central and Southeastern Europe to make the files of its secret police accessible to the public.

The New York Times reported in 2017 that Albania had created a commission to publicise Sigurimi files and identify candidates for public office who had collaborated with the communist regime, while critics said the process had begun too late and that many documents had probably been destroyed long before.

AIDSSH

The Authority for Information on Former State Security Documents was established by presidential decree on 22 May 2015 and began functioning after parliament elected its members and chair in November 2016. The Authority is responsible for collecting, preserving, administering and making available documents of the former State Security, supporting research, informing individuals and institutions, and assisting processes related to missing persons and public remembrance.

In 2020 and 2022, Law No. 45/2015 was amended to ease access and broaden the Authority's functions. The law applies to documents of the former State Security for the period from 29 November 1944 until the establishment of the National Intelligence Service on 2 July 1991.

AIDSSH joined the European Network of Official Authorities Responsible for Secret Police Files as a full member in 2021, after first participating as an observer.

Destruction and limits of the archive

The surviving archive is incomplete. AIDSSH guidance notes that a significant number of documents were destroyed and that destruction protocols sometimes survive in the archival collections. Other transitional-justice research has reported that orders to reduce the archive's inventory were issued in 1990 and 1991, and that nearly 50,000 files are believed to have been destroyed in one purge of personnel records in 1991.

AIDSSH and researchers therefore caution against treating the surviving files as a complete record of the communist period. The files are evidence of the functioning of the security apparatus, but they often reflect ideological categories, coercive practices and the perspective of officers rather than a neutral description of events.

Directors

Koçi Xoxe, the first head of the security service.

The following list follows published Albanian chronologies of the directors of the State Security.

No.	Name	Took office	Left office
1	Koçi Xoxe	14 December 1944	22 March 1946
2	Nesti Kerenxhi	2 April 1946	February 1948
3	Vaskë Koleci	8 March 1948	30 October 1948
4	Beqir Ndou	1 November 1948	9 March 1949
5	Kadri Hazbiu	9 March 1950	1 August 1954
6	Mihallaq Ziqishti	1 August 1954	4 May 1962
7	Rexhep Kolli	5 May 1962	15 May 1967
8	Feçor Shehu	15 May 1967	31 December 1969
9	Lelo Sinaj	1 January 1970	15 May 1972
10	Muço Saliu	16 May 1972	28 February 1974
–	Feçor Shehu	1 March 1974	15 January 1980
11	Kadri Gojashi	16 January 1980	4 April 1982
–	Rexhep Kolli	4 April 1982	23 June 1982
12	Pëllumb Kapo	24 June 1982	15 October 1982
13	Zylyftar Ramizi	16 October 1982	31 March 1987
14	Zef Loka	1 April 1987	15 February 1988
–	Zylyftar Ramizi	15 February 1988	31 January 1989
15	Frederik Ymeri	1 February 1989	31 August 1990
16	Nerulla Zebi	31 August 1990	15 August 1991

Legacy

The Sigurimi remains a major symbol of Albania's communist repression. Museums and memory institutions such as the Museum of Secret Surveillance in Tirana, Spaç Prison memorial initiatives and AIDSSH's archive have made the history of surveillance, imprisonment and political persecution more visible to the public.

Debates over the files continue to affect Albanian politics. The late opening of the archive, missing or destroyed files, the use of old records in political conflicts, and the difficulty of distinguishing perpetrators, coerced informants and victims have all complicated Albania's reckoning with its communist past.

See also

• AIDSSH (Albania)
• SHIK
• SHISH
• Museum of Secret Surveillance
• Operation Valuable
• Spaç Prison
• People's Socialist Republic of Albania
• Fall of communism in Albania

External links

• U.S. Library of Congress Country Study: Albania  – data as of April 1992
• Authority for Information on Former State Security Documents