Audio By Carbonatix
On March 15, 2008, a fireball shot into the midday sky over Albania’s capital of Tirana. The blast echoed 100 miles away in Macedonia and Kosovo. Its force was comparable to that of a small nuclear weapon. But this wasn’t atomic. It was an accident at an arms depot, where poor villagers had been hired to handle old ammunition and artillery shells. The explosion killed up to 26 people and injured hundreds. The village of Gerdec was obliterated.
Three men were arrested for mass murder in what local media dubbed “Albania’s Hiroshima.” Two of them were alleged accomplices to a 23-year-old Miami Beach-based arms dealer named Efraim Diveroli, who faces trial later this year on 83 counts of fraud and conspiracy for procuring Chinese-made ammo in Albania and selling it to the Pentagon.
The charges may be hard to prove, though. A potential lead witness in the case, Kosta Trebicka, died mysteriously in September. His body was found bloodied and sprawled across a dirt road in eastern Albania, some 50 yards from his slightly dented SUV. Trebicka had recorded a tape (played in the YouTube clip below) in which Diveroli said corruption in that country “went up… to the prime minister and his son.”
The phone call between Efraim Diveroli and Kosta Trebicka:
