Wrote: Etrit Rexhepi
A Facebook account named "Pajtim Malokaj" has published (April 14) a video material showing the leader of the Democratic Party of Albania (DPSH) describing the columnist Sadri Ramabaja as a member of the Yugoslav state secret service (UDBA), a comment which is followed by an image presenting a document, which purports to prove Ramabaja's membership in this institution.
After checking and verifying by hibrid.info, no source has been found that confirms the above claim, and it has also not been proven that the document presented in the image is original.
As of the time of writing, the publication in question has 153 comments and 337 shares on Facebook.
Link to the video material published by the "Pajtim Malokaj" account on Facebook:
The same image was also published by a Facebook page called "Dardania press" (see here).
After research using the automated search program "InVID", several cases were found where the same image with the document in question was published with the aim of proving engagement in the Yugoslav secret service UDBA, for various personalities (see here).
A similar claim about the Croatian Minister of Interior, Davor Božinović, has been treated and assessed as a forgery by the fact-checker in Croatia “faktograf.hr” (see here).
Knowing about the possibility that the document in question with the image of Ramabaja may have been manipulated, hibrid.info has researched this photograph.
Hibrid.info has found an article from the Albanian-language portal, "Nacionale", which features the same image of Ramabaja, which appears to have been taken from an article published in a magazine in 1995 (see here).
Another fact that is also revealed in the article by "faktograf.hr", is that from 1964, three years after the birth of Ramabaja (here), in official documents of the Yugoslav secret service, this institution was referred to with the abbreviation "SDB" (see here).
Also, due to the fact that the Lustration Law has not yet been adopted in our country, confirmation of similar claims for officials or former public officials is difficult to document (see here).
Analyze:
The claim that columnist Sadri Ramabaja is a former collaborator of the Yugoslav state security is unconfirmed.
The published document that claims to prove the claim in question is manipulated, and the law that would open files on the activities of public officials during the communist era has not yet been adopted in Kosovo.
Based on the working methodology, hibrid.info assesses this content as "Fraud".
Reasoning:
The “Deception” rating is given to informational content that is manipulated in terms of visual (deepfake, cheapfake), audio, or textual content to deceive the audience. This form of deception is usually used to produce false and manipulated content.