An ethnic Greek man who spent 30 years in the prisons of Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxha, on charges of spying for Greece during the Cold War, passed away recently in the northwest city of Igoumenitsa.
Loukas Christidis, a member of the ethnic Greek minority in the neighboring country, had detailed how he was tortured on a daily basis in Albania’s gulag, including beatings, sleep deprivation and mock executions.
Instead of the recognition and gratitude that the Greek state owed Christidis after the collapse of the communist dictatorship in Albania, and his repatriation to Greece, this unheralded hero wound up in a tiny apartment in Igoumenitsa, where he took his last breath last week.