TIRANA, Aug 21 (Reuters) – Albania on Sunday announced the arrest of four Czech nationals near a military site a day after two Russians and a Ukrainian attempted to break into an arms factory in central from the country.
The Albanian Defense Minister announced in a statement on Saturday evening that two soldiers had been slightly injured while arresting a 24-year-old Russian national who had entered the site of the Gramsh factory and was trying to take pictures.
The man resisted his arrest and used a stun spray, the minister said.
Two other suspects, a 33-year-old Russian and a 25-year-old Ukrainian, were arrested nearby.
Defense Minister Niko Peleshi said on Sunday it was premature to comment on the motives behind the incident, while citing the immediate geopolitical context – the Russian invasion of Ukraine that Tirana, a NATO member since 2009 , denounced.
“Given the regional context and the geopolitical context, it cannot be ruled out that this is anything other than an ordinary civil incident, but we must not jump to conclusions,” he said afterwards. visiting the two injured guards in the hospital.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Saturday that the three people arrested were “suspected of spying”, without giving further details.
According to Tirana-based media, the three intruders are bloggers who usually visit abandoned military sites or factories.
The Gramsh factory, which produced AK-47s under the communist regime, then served as a dismantling site for armaments and ammunition before being used as a factory by the army.
It was near another sensitive site, the Polian arms factory, south of Tirana, that four Czechs, two men and two women, were arrested on Sunday, police said.
The two women were spotted on the site, while the two men were arrested in a factory tunnel.
According to the Albanian media, they all presented themselves as tourists. (Report Florion Goga and Fatos Bytyci, French version Sophie Louet)