Ali Ahmeti

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Ali Ahmeti (Macedonian: Али Ахмети) (born January 4, 1959 in the village of Zajas, Republic of Macedonia) is the political leader of the Democratic Union for Integration (Albanian: Bashkimi Demokratik për Integrim), an opposition party in the Republic of Macedonia. Ali Ahmeti is also known as the political leader for the former National Liberation Army (NLA).

[edit] Biography

From 1979 to 1983 Ahmeti studied Philosophy at the University of Pristina in Kosovo, graduating in 1983. Between 1981 and 1983, he also was one of the leaders of the student movement in Kosovo, asking for "better human rights" for the Albanian population in Kosovo. For these activities, Ahmeti was arrested and imprisoned for one year by the Serbian regime.

During the years 1984/1986 he was involved with reconsolidation of the student movement ( and general popular movement ) in Kosovo. In 1986, Ahmeti gained political asylum in Switzerland, where he was living until 2001, and was working like a coordinator of different groups.

Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic by psychiatrists in Switzerland, Ali Ahmeti was judged incapable for labor and thus obtained 3,000.00 Swiss francs per month from the invalidity insurance in Lucerne due to his paranoid and schizophrenic tendencies.^[1].

During 1988/89 he was one of the leaders of the student and miners protests against the Milosevic government. During 1989/90, he was one of the main organizers of protests of the Albanian diaspora in Europe. Ahmeti, gained his recent political support from the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo. In the year 1986, he was elected as a member of the Main Council, with a specific duty, interconnecting Kosovo with Europe. In the year 1988, he was elected member of the leadership of the National Movement of Kosovo. He was re-elected in this position in 1993, with the special duty in the military sector.

During the year 1996, Ahmeti was one of the main founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, in 1998, when the war started, he was elected member of the main headquarters of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

In 2001, Ahmeti was elected Supreme Commander and representative of the National Liberation Army (NLA), which in the same year was officially recognized as a terrorist organization by the USA and thus in June 2001 Ali Ahmeti has been placed on the black list^[2] of people unwelcomed in the USA because of terrorist activities and he was proclaimed Persona non grata in Switzerland and other countries as well.

After the signature of the Ohrid Agreement in August 2001, and the decomposition of the NLA in September, Ahmeti was engaged in the political process of the implementation of this Agreement. In this light, he initiated and was named as a leader of the Coordination Council which unified all Albanian political parties in Macedonia, and the former structures of the NLA. In June 2002, Ahmeti founded a new Political Party named Democratic Union for Integration (Albanian: Bashkimi Demokratik për Integrim). In September 2002, DUI won the elections among Albanian parties in the Republic and Ali Ahmeti was elected as a deputy in the Macedonian Parliament. DUI entered in coalition with the wining party from the Macedonian block, SDSM (Social Democratic Union of Macedonia).

After the latest elections (July 2006) DUI is no longer part of the government. In January 2007, a boycott of the Macedonian Parliament has been decided.