Shkëlzen Berisha: American justice dropped the accusations that say I killed in Gerdec

In 2017 I filed a lawsuit in the United States against Efraim Diveroli and two other AEY employees, Alexander Podrizki and David Packouz, for their false statements about me, which were intended to support their scheme criminals to defraud the United States government.

As part of this lawsuit, I also sued Guy Lawson and the publishers of Lawson’s book “War Dogs” (or “Weapons and Cunnas”) for irresponsibly publishing Mr.’s lies. Diveroli and his associates. In this book Mr. Lawson failed to meet even the minimum standards of journalism. He deliberately avoided interviewing me and other people who opposed Diveroli’s lies.

He decided to rely on the unfounded statements of a group of chronic fraudsters and convicted criminals, whom Lawson paid for their versions of the story. Also to shape his slander Mr. Lawson used as “credible” sources Erion Veliaj, Andi Belliu and Gary Kokalarin (whom Lawson himself considered unbelievable because he saw him as a “maniac furious with a private agenda”) who either refused to testify during the trial or testified under I swear they had no knowledge of any involvement of me in this story.

I decided to file this lawsuit to get to the bottom of the truth and also to bring to justice those individuals and entities who had profited millions of dollars from the slander leveled against me.

Throughout this legal sage, documents emerged proving fourfold that all allegations made by Mr. Lawson about my alleged involvement in arms trafficking were defamatory. Before the American courts, testifying under oath, Mr. Diveroli not only stated that he had fabricated for my involvement, but also clarified the reasons for this fraud.

They were also proven as slander by the report of the investigators of the US Department of Defense, who found that Podrizki, who claimed to have been in a meeting with me, did not know Shkelzen Berisha when the investigators showed him his photo. Further still when Mr. Belliu declared under oath to the court that he did not know me at all and had no knowledge of my involvement or not in the story of Gerdec or AEY. Or even worse when “reliable source” Erion Veliaj refused to come to testify before the court the slanders passed on to Mr. Lawson.

Although contacted by me and with full access to dozens of my public statements and many others that refuted his lies, Mr. Lawson never contacted me to hear the truth that could ruin his pocket profits secured, through defamation against me, by the contract with the publishing house.

Unable to substantiate the published defamation with facts and arguments and to confront the jury, Mr. Lawson decided to “hide” after my appointment as a public figure, shifting the legal debate from the veracity of the allegations to the lack of malice in publishing the defamation in question. In short, he addressed the substance of the case by stating that he had simply believed the list of slanderers who at the time of the confrontation either did not appear in court or admitted under oath that they had cheated.

So in none of the three levels of the system did the judges assess the veracity of Mr. Lawson’s defamation but whether or not they were done maliciously.

This is precisely why two U.S. Supreme Court justices in a not-so-common decision decided to publish a dissenting opinion seeking a departure from the 1964 standard that the debate on defamation of public figures should be limited to the absence or not the awareness of the slander and malice of the slanderer, as in this way the victims of these slanders are deprived of any opportunity to address them and seek justice for the damage caused.

Although I would have liked this to be the decision of the majority, the opinion of the two honorable judges shows that my legal battle has been based on the intention to seek and extract the truth.