Beqir Balluku was an Albanian politician, military leader, and Minister of Defense of Albania.
17 Facts About Beqir Balluku
1.
2.
Beqir Balluku was born on 14 February 1917 in Tirana, Albania.
3.
Beqir Balluku studied at a technical high school in Tirana.
4.
On 28 January 1948 Beqir Balluku was named Chief of the Head Command of the Albanian Army.
5.
In 1956 Beqir Balluku was presiding over the municipality of Tirana Conference of the Communist Party when the opponents of the Enver Hoxha - Mehmet Shehu regime nearly overthrew the government.
6.
Beqir Balluku informed Nexhmije Hoxha that Enver Hoxha should return from the holidays and keep the situation under control.
7.
Shehu and Beqir Balluku's intervention helped cause the 1956 purge of the Albanian Communist Party.
8.
The troika Hoxha-Shehu-Beqir Balluku was so described by Nikita Khrushchev, then First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:.
9.
In July 1974, after 22 uninterrupted years of service as the Minister of Defense of the People's Republic of Albania, Beqir Balluku himself was accused by Enver Hoxha of instigating revisionist ideas and was put on trial, accused of a military coup d'etat and high treason against his own country.
10.
Beqir Balluku was sentenced to death along with Petrit Dume, Hito Cako and Rrahman Perrllaku.
11.
Beqir Balluku was then ranked as the fourth member of the ruling Communist Party.
12.
The first indication was a discrepancy between Hoxha's and Beqir Balluku's opinions on the defense system of Albania; the second was a request from Beijing to Hoxha that he remove Beqir Balluku, who was making too many requests on weapons imports from People's Republic of China.
13.
The third possibility was the coup d'etat intent of Beqir Balluku, possibly endorsed by the other pro-Soviet Union defense high functionaries.
14.
Beqir Balluku was executed by firing squad on 5 November 1975.
15.
Beqir Balluku's remains were retrieved only 26 years later, on 18 July 2000, on request of his family members.
16.
Beqir Balluku had been put in a secret common grave in Vranisht, Vlore County, together with the other two former Albanian generals who had been accused by Hoxha in 1974.
17.
In 1979, following the ideological split of the Party of Labour of Albania from the Chinese Communist Party, Enver Hoxha wrote in his memoirs that the "enemy groups" of Abdyl Kellezi and Beqir Balluku had drafted their inimical plan based on suggestions from Zhou Enlai, who was Premier of the People's Republic of China.