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UÇKHistory and Memory
Life: ? – 17 January 1982

Memorial profile · Political leaders

Kadri Zeka

Kadri Zeka was an Albanian political activist from the Gjilan region, involved in the student movement and later in the political organization of the Albanian diaspora in Switzerland and Germany. On 17 January 1982 he was killed near Stuttgart together with the brothers Jusuf and Bardhosh Gërvalla. His name became part of the memory of the political movements of the 1980s; the public university in Gjilan bears his name today.

Editorial status: Awaiting verificationDrafted from the cited sources; not yet fully reviewed by the editors.

Source basis

Academic monographs; detailed biographical data await verification against Albanian archival sources.

Zeka belonged to the generation of activists who, after the repression of the 1970s and of 1981, tried to organize underground Albanian groups in exile [1].

As with Jusuf Gërvalla, the killing is widely attributed in the literature to the Yugoslav state security service, but the archive does not present the attribution as judicially established without such a source [2].

Sources

  1. [1]Noel Malcolm. Kosovo: A Short History. HarperPerennial, New York (botim i përditësuar); botimi i parë: Macmillan, Londër, 1998, 1999. https://archive.org/details/kosovoshorthisto0000malc. Accessed 2026-09-16.
  2. [2]James Pettifer. The Kosova Liberation Army: Underground War to Balkan Insurgency, 1948–2001. Hurst Publishers, Londër, 2014-01. https://hurstpublishers.com/book/the-kosova-liberation-army-2/. Accessed 2026-09-16.

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