REPUBLISHED

10 years in court for throwing eggs at Rama, former students seek justice

Erblin Vukaj · Originally published: 7 March 2025

Ten years after a symbolic protest in which they challenged Prime Minister Edi Rama by throwing eggs at him, eight former students from the “Movement for the University” are returning to court to seek acquittal.

Although they have served their sentences of community service, a recent Supreme Court decision has sent the case back for rehearing. They now aim not only to clear their names, but also to send a clear message that freedom of expression and the right to protest cannot be infringed lightly.

The history of the case

In November 2015, the Faculty of Social Sciences in Tirana became the scene of a confrontation between students and the authority of Rama’s first government, an episode that would leave its mark on the debate about freedom of expression and the right to protest.

It was midday on 2 November when a group of students from the “Movement for the University” positioned themselves at the faculty entrance. They waited for Prime Minister Edi Rama to leave a meeting he was attending there that day.

For more than a year, the Movement had opposed the “Higher Education Reform”, a government initiative approved by parliament despite criticism from the opposition, academics and civil society. According to its opponents, the reform threatened university autonomy and opened the way to the further commercialisation of higher education.

As soon as the prime minister left the faculty, the students’ chants against him and in defence of free public education filled the courtyard. In a tense moment, an egg was thrown towards him, but missed.

The security forces responded immediately. Police and Republican Guard officers, some in plain clothes, intervened, violently detaining several students whose attempts to leave proved futile.

Eight of them ended up at Police Station No. 2, where they were held for around eight hours without any clear explanation.

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They were ultimately charged with “assault on a person because of their official duties” and “resisting police officers”. The investigation lasted five months, while the trial extended for another ten months.

On 20 March 2017, the Tirana Court found them guilty and sentenced them to two months in prison, a sentence later converted into 60 hours of community service.

The students’ legal representatives from the “Res Publica” centre appealed the judgment, but the Court of Appeal rejected the appeal on the grounds that the centre “did not have all the necessary authority to lodge an appeal on behalf of the defendants”.

But this decision would not be the final one in the story. In an unexpected turn, in March this year the Supreme Court described the appeal court’s approach as “excessively formalistic and disproportionate”, finding that it had denied the students full access to justice.

As a result, the court ordered the case to be reconsidered by a different panel at the Court of Appeal, and the eight former students now have an opportunity to secure acquittal.

Procedural irregularities and the case’s significance

The investigation and trial of the eight students were marked by a series of problems. During hearings, which were often postponed without a compelling reason, Prime Minister Rama never testified.

Meanwhile, the police officers at the scene were never able to identify any student as the alleged egg thrower. Only the remains of a single egg were seized as physical evidence.

Four prosecution witnesses, all police officers, gave identical testimony, raising doubts about their credibility. In addition, police carried out unauthorised searches of the students’ homes and, according to testimony, some of the students suffered physical violence.

While members of the “Movement for the University” faced a long and difficult trial, one of the officers involved in the violent detentions that day advanced in his career despite involvement in suspicious activities.

According to the former students detained on 2 November 2015, Dedian Gjoni was one of the police officers who took part in the operation. Eight years later, in 2023, he was arrested on suspicion of involvement in criminal activities and facilitating assassination attempts.

This adds further questions about justice and institutional accountability in the handling of cases involving protests against the government.

“Imagine why such a person was in the police, and why Rama had him in the highest ranks of the police,” Bora Mema, one of the former students involved, said on the programme “Ora e Betit”, alleging that Gjoni was among the officers who assaulted and threatened students at the 2015 protest.

“The case is not simply about an egg, but about the right to protest in any form, the right to express oneself, the right to due process,” lawyer Dorian Matlija stressed on the same programme.

An episode that began as a student revolt against a university reform is ending up as a precedent with broad implications for protesters’ rights in Albania and the state’s approach to dissenting citizens.