The Adventure of January 21st reporter

Many things can be said for the killed protesters, any justification would be expectable. But Fatos Mahmutaj was reporting live at 15:00 with the studio of the TV station he was working for, when he suddenly got hit by the same bullet that took the life of Hekuran Deda. Both of them were standing on the same platform, a few centimeters from each other.

Eurel Mahmutaj is the brother of Fatos.

“Initially, we heard that Fatos was injured, but we thought that maybe he had been pushed by the crowd. Afterwards we learned what had really happened”, says the reporter’s brother.

The epicenter of the mistery that happened in the middle of Tirana’s main boulevard, under the watchful eye of dozens of cameras, is the dynamics of the event, and above all, the dynamics of all bullets that were shot.

Where did they come from? Whose guns shot them? These questions would bring many answers. But after being wounded, Fatos Mahmutaj was still thinking about his work, the duty of a journalist, which is that of reporting what he saw with his eyes.
 
“Fatos was very committed in his work, and he took the first aid at an ambulance that was standing by. Afterwards he went at work, and the TV station that should support him, tried to manipulate him”, Eurel added.

This is the personal drama of Fatos Mahmutaj, told by his brother, a member of the family that was following the personal dilemmas of the 33 year old reporter. No doubt that those physical sufferings came before the psychological ones. A bullet had just passed through his right hand.
 
“Fatos went to the hospital, and doctors said that he had nothing to worry about. Later on, Fatos gave his declaration at the Prosecution Office and Coroner Office, where the medical report was being manipulated”, the brother adds.

Many hours passed on that January afternoon that happened to be a hotter day than usual, and Fatos still wandered from the Hospital to the Prosecution Office and along the streets of Tirana, with his wounded hand and a fake diagnosis.

“The wound got worse and his hand started swelling. He couldn’t move the fingers anymore”, Eurel tells us.

Coincidence put the reporter from Mallakastra at the eye of the cyclone. The burden for his family and himself became too much to bare. Conscience and the fact of being in the wrong place and at the wrong time, a time that signed the gravest event in the latest years for Albania, is an explosive combination. His decision for coming to Top-Channel and confess what had really happened, was something that cost him dear.

This is the phrase that cost a lot to him personally: “I explained the prosecutors that I was wounded by a National Guard solider.”

That day he should have become the hero, but people did everything for making him silent, although without success.
 
“Fatos changed a lot. He felt very disappointed from his employer and emotionally closed himself off from us”, Eurel underlines.

What the public has missed in the information that has been receiving these days is the fact that Fatos Mahmutaj has left Albania, very quickly, feeling endangered and desperate for the evil that he saw with his own eyes.

“Fatos left Albania after being threatened. He was told that he had done a big mistake giving the declaration for the prosecutors and speaking on Top Channel”, Eurel adds.

Try to imagine the position of Fatos, obliged to leave Albania because of the pressure, and exactly in this time he received a more unpleasant news.
 
“2-3 days after Fatos left, a relative called him and told that “Rinas Airport” had a written order to not allow Fatos Mahmutaj leave Albania”, says the reporter’s brother.

The burden on his family is too big; the situation around him was getting tighter, leaving him the only option to survive. His escape was desperate.
 
“He left Vlore Port in a half-clandestine way. Fatos arrived in Italy and from there he went to Belgium, where he filed a request for political asylum”, Eurel tells us.

The status of the political asylum might have been a relief for his family, and seemed that they would start hearing good news for him. But Belgian doctors gave him another shocking truth.

“Doctors stated that he did not have a light wound in his arm, but three broken bones,” says his brother.

Fatos Mahmutaj is a colleague in asylum, a victim of this environment in the building of which each of has contributed; an environment from which the political asylum seems the only option for people and journalists who feel endangered like him.

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