National mourning on Nov. 2 proclaimed by the Tirana government for the untimely death at age 73 of Fatos Nano, former prime minister and leader of the Socialist Party. Solemn state funerals were held in the presence of all Albanian authorities.
Fatos Nano was a courageous politician who managed to lead Albania through very difficult years while also paying a very high personal price. After completing his economics studies in Tirana and abroad, Nano entered politics and led in 1991 the first government after the end of the communist dictatorship.
Elected to the leadership of the Socialist Party, Nano marked a historic turning point by cutting ties with the communism of the old Labor Party of Albania and paving the way toward European democratic socialism.
In 1993 he had to suffer the humiliation of arrest and a five-year sentence for alleged bribery. An unfounded charge from which he was fully exonerated. An important contribution to dismantling the accusatory castle against Nano was made by Italy.
As Aldo Sicignano, then a senior executive in the Italian Foreign Ministry, recalls-both the Italian Corte dei Conti and the ordinary Italian judiciary took up the matter. Albanian magistrates argued that Fatos Nano had inflated the purchase of low-quality emergency goods from Italy for personal gain.
Sicignano recalls:”The Rome prosecutor's office sent notices of guarantee to the technicians involved in the affair. A working group I coordinated proved that prices had not been inflated and that Italian companies had supplied Albania with products at near-cost price but of excellent quality. Prosecutors filed the investigation“
Nano's release from prison in 1977 was greeted by Bettino Craxi with this message: “I salute the liberation of comrade
Dwarf, victim of persecution by a reactionary regime“
Animated by fighting spirit Nano returned to the leadership of the government four months after being released in the difficult period of the crisis triggered by the “financial pyramids” and then again in 2002.
In 2005 after his electoral defeat he left the leadership of the Socialist Party and after his failure to be elected to the Presidency of the Republic ,in 2008, he left the scene for good.
In 2023, Prime Minister Edi Rama awarded him the position of “Grand Cordon with Star of Merit.”.
The photos of Bettino Craxi's documents are part of the Archives of the Senate of the Italian Republic, which we thank
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