Ibrahim El Salih lost his job and his daughter and grew increasing belligerent in his social media posts. Then he was arrested for “encouraging terrorist acts”.
Ibrahim El Salih used to work as an inspector for the Protection of Territory at his local municipality in Kukes, a small town in northern Albania. A father of two, he was known as a practicing Muslim and a supporter of the opposition Democratic Party.
No one would have described him as an ‘extremist,’ until May 24, when the Anti-Terrorism Directorate of Albanian State Police arrested him on suspicion of “encouraging terrorist acts” via a series of Facebook posts. If convicted, 56-year-old El Salih faces spending up to 10 years in prison.
Those who know him are baffled by the turn of events. Prosecutors, however, say they have no doubt.
They accuse him of using a Facebook account to issue a series of posts promoting the Islamic State and its late leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and calling for a holy war in the Middle East and Africa.
El Salih was released on June 11 after an Appeals Court rejected a prosecution request to keep him in custody until trial.
His defence lawyer, Ferid Muca, said El Salih had simply been sharing his frustrations over the suffering of Muslims and quoting from the Quran.
“None of the posts or statements of the defendant whom I represent have been made with the purpose of inciting or calling or propaganda, as police and prosecutors says,” Muca told BIRN.
“He shared them due to the fact that he is sensitive to the injustices suffered by Muslims, since he is a Muslim believer and regularly practices his religion.”
Facebook calls
The initial court decision to remand El Salih in custody, seen by BIRN, lists 13 Facebook posts in which he expresses support for Islamic State, for Baghdadi, who was killed in a US raid in Syria in 2019, and for a Tirana preacher who was convicted of recruiting and fighters for the Islamic State.
The preacher, Genci Balla, is serving a 17-year prison sentence for recruiting dozens of Albanians who joined the Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front in Syria between 2012 and 2014.
On October 12, 2021, El Salih called for Balla’s release; on October 19, he praised Baghdadi and the “legitimate” Islamic State caliphate, which took in swathes of Iraq and Syria until its downfall in 2019 to a US-backed coalition of Syrian Kurds and Arabs.
On March 7 this year, El Salih posted a video of armed men in balaclavas, and again expressed his support for Islamic State.
“The hypocrites said that the Islamic State lost the war! No, they are in war and they are fighting,” he wrote. “The jihad isn’t a war to create a kingdom for a slave! It is a jihad to impose the kingdom of God on the land!”
And at the end of March, he posted another video in which soldiers in black forcibly arrest a man. El Salih described it as “the true face of Israel.”
“May Allah take vengeance and destroy Israel,” he wrote.
Despite the content of the posts, Muca, his lawyer, said El Salih had no influence.
“There are very few comments or likes, maximum 17 likes and often there are no likes or comments at all,” he said.
Personal setbacks
El Salih was born in the village of Shtiqen, near Kukes.
When his house was demolished to make way for an airport, El Salih used the compensation he got from the state to move his family to an apartment in Kukes.
“Ibrahim and his brothers and sisters had a difficult childhood because his father, Salih Lekica, was a political prisoner for agitating against” the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha, a former neighbour in Shtiqen told BIRN, on condition of anonymity.
Originally Ibrahim Lekica, he changed his name surname to El Salih in 2010.
His boss at the municipality, Muhamet Gashi, said he had done so “out of respect for the sufferings of his father”. But the Islamised version raised some eyebrows at the municipality when he was hired in 2015.
“On one occasion, the Supreme State Audit came to check the list of employees and one of them commented that we had someone employed from Arabia,” Gashi recalled.
Gashi praised his former colleague: “Although he lacked the necessary qualification for the job that he covered, he was correct and somebody that you can trust.”
With no higher education to boast of, El Salih was dismissed in 2019 when the Socialist Party took power in the municipality. This was the start of a difficult time for him, Gashi said. El Salih’s disabled daughter died at the age of 20 and he turned to drink.
“He was advised to practice religion and to go to the mosque as a way to fight alcohol,” Gashi said. El Salih began attending the local mosque, but Gashi said that, “for as long as I knew him, I haven’t seen any kind of extremism, except some desire to participate in political debates.”
‘Wrong’ interpretation of the Quran
Islam Hoxha, the mufti of Kukes, said that he sometimes disagreed with El Salih over interpretations of the Quran.
“I didn’t have any concern about this man, he was well known by the people here,” he said, but added that El Salih’s understanding of the Quran was “wrong.”
Some of that may have come from a lack of education, Hoxha told BIRN.
“The Quran is in Arabic, a language that contains some 12 million words that have many meanings and that sometimes are wrongly interpreted,” he said. “In my opinion, Ibrahim El Salih had a wrong understanding of Quran. He didn’t know that, however.”
Hoxha said there was little change that El Salih’s more radical views would have come from his local mosque.
“Violent extremism is a global issue,” he said. “Preaching in the mosque is done by an imam who is authorised by the mufti’s office, so appointed by us.”
El Salih, he said, “may have been emotionally influenced via Facebook.”