Devolli police have arrested 64-year-old Zenel Rushitaj, a resident of Hoçisht village, on the charge of sexual harassment of a minor.
According to the police, the 64-year-old man not only verbally harassed the 13-year-old, but also made physical contact.
In an interview for Euronews Albania, the minor’s mother confessed that the 64-year-old had threatened her daughter that if she told about the harassment, he would kill her father.
“As the girl told me, a long time ago he had threatened her and told her that if she told about the harassment, he would kill her father. He said this months ago.
The girl told me that what you think did not happen. He didn’t do anything to me, he did other things to me. He touched me with his hand. We know him as a fellow villager, we had no way in or out. It’s been 2 days since the girl told me after we intercepted the messages he was sending on his grandfather’s phone.
We saw her when her phone rang 2-3 days ago, her sister-in-law saw her but she didn’t show that her husband was there. I rang him twice, but we didn’t talk. He took the girl out of the village, lied to her, gave her money”, said the mother of the minor.
Meanwhile, the 13-year-old’s grandfather, Haxhi Rushitaj, told how they had discovered the incident through messages on his phone that his granddaughter was using.
“My wife is in Germany and she left me the phone and my niece uses it. I asked him one day and he didn’t want to give it to me, I took it by force and the other son’s daughter-in-law read the messages.
The messages were “go out here, meet there”, places they had frequented. There were no threatening messages. We caught them yesterday. I wanted to meet that person, he wasn’t, and I met a police officer and filed a report.
He is a problematic person, he was convicted during communism for murder, he served almost 18 years in prison, and was convicted for raping a woman,” he said.
