An email with threatening and terrorist content has alerted several institutions in various cities across the country this morning, including institutions of the justice system.
Among the targeted institutions were the Special Prosecution Office against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) and the Special Court against Corruption and Organized Crime (GJKKO), while the email was also sent to other justice institutions. The email alleged that a bomb had been placed in the buildings of the institutions, which would explode in two hours.
"Hello. This is the Islamic State," the message begins, while further threatening that, by the will of Allah, a bomb has been placed in the building and that after the explosion, the people inside would be killed.
The wording of the message raises suspicions that the text may have been automatically translated into Albanian. Expressions like “This is the Islamic State” are incorrect and have the structure of a word-for-word translation.
The email was sent from the address [email protected]. The domain used in the address [email protected] resembles the official domain of the Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos (UNER) in Argentina, uner.edu.ar. However, the email address used in the threat ends with .uner.edu.a, so the letter r is missing at the end of the ar domain.
Investigators are working to determine the real source of the email and the perpetrator or perpetrators of the threat.
For now, what is confirmed is that the threat has reached the email addresses of several Albanian institutions and that, after a specialized check, no explosives were found.
SPAK and GJKKO
The content of the message prompted the State Police structures to immediately begin verifications in the institutions involved. In SPAK and GJKKO, the checks were also carried out by Anti-Terror specialists, equipped with special tools to control the presence of explosives, as well as dogs specialized in detecting explosives.
Faktoje has provided footage from the checks at the SPAK and GJKKO premises, where specialists verified the institutions' premises after receiving the threat.
From the checks carried out so far, no bombs or explosives have been found to have been planted.
The State Police announced that, in addition to on-site verifications, the Directorate for the Investigation of Cybercrimes, in cooperation with the Anti-Terrorism Directorate and other law enforcement agencies, continues to work to identify the author and the email address from which the threats were sent.
Authorities have called on citizens not to panic, emphasizing that Police structures are committed to guaranteeing public order and security.
Repeated attack
This is not the first time Albanian institutions have faced such threats. Today's case comes at a time when Albania is also facing another form of threat: foreign information manipulation and interference, known as FIMI.
Precisely on this topic, a few days ago Faktoje published a podcast with the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Ferit Hoxha, in a conversation with the executive director of Faktoje.al, Klodiana Kapo.
Hoxha considers FIMI a major challenge for Albania, which, after Iran's massive cyberattack in 2022, realized that it is just as exposed as other European countries. According to him, the risk is not only related to institutions, but also to citizens' trust in democracy and the European path.
"Albania today faces a relatively large, very large or massive attack from abroad every second," Hoxha declares, underlining the need for mechanisms that go to the facts, since "there is only one truth, while there are many narratives."
In this context, today's email threat and the use of the name "Islamic State" to intimidate institutions is another case that shows the importance of verifying information and identifying its source. /Taken from Faktoje.al
