Albania’s top leaders and thousands of people paid their last respect on Saturday to the country’s only post-independence monarch, King Ahmet Zog I, half a century after he died and was buried in exile.
Television stations broadcast the burial ceremony in the capital, a day after Zog’s remains were returned from France. He was buried in the family’s mausoleum, alongside his Hungarian wife, Queen Geraldina, his son Leka I and his wife Susan.
Zog proclaimed himself Albania’s monarch in 1928 and ruled until 1939 when he fled Albania after it was occupied by fascist Italy. Albania’s post-World War II communist regime abolished the monarchy in 1946.
Photo: AFP
Albania is now a parliamentary republic after the fall of communism in 1990.
The royal family returned to Albania in 2002, leading a quiet life though never relinquishing the claim to the throne.
Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha said that Albanians honor Zog “for his historic contribution in building up this country.”
Berisha was joined at the ceremony by Albanian President Bujar Nishani and Kosovar President Ahtifete Jahjaga at the ceremony which was ignored by the country’s opposition parties.
Nishani said Zog “is one of the most important figures of the Albanian history.”
After Albania’s Communist regime fell in 1990, Zog’s son, Leka I Zog, made two disastrous attempts to return home — first in 1993 when Berisha’s government threw him out and in 1997 when he was charged with leading an armed uprising after failing to convince Albanians to vote for monarchy in a referendum.
Since then, the family has been given back some of its old royal properties and granted diplomatic passports. Zog’s grandson, Leka II Zog, has since served as an adviser to several Albanian governments.
The Bolivian government on Friday struck a deal with protesting miners, but was still grappling with blockades and demonstrations by other workers across La Paz. Other groups are still blocking access roads into the city, which is also the seat of the government. Police on Thursday prevented the miners from entering the main square by using tear gas, while the demonstrators hurled stones and explosives with slingshots. Protests against the policies of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz have convulsed the Andean nation since early this month, and roadblocks were choking routes into La Paz throughout Friday, the national road authority said. Miners demanded that Paz
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
A ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was seized and taken toward Iran and another — a cargo ship near Oman — sank after being attacked, authorities said on Thursday, as tensions escalated near the Strait of Hormuz. It was not immediately clear who was behind these incidents, but they happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim of control over the waterway and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the US. The turmoil in the strait has been a sticking point for weeks in talks between the US and Iran to
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
RSS