Sighting record / 1990
August 1, 1990. Around 02:30 in the morning. Gëzim Dapi, a conscript in an anti-aircraft unit, stood guard at a post in the village of Bardhaj, near Shkodër in northern Albania. Then the lights came. Between 100 and 150 of them, arranged with "a strange regularity" in the shape of a diamond. They crossed the sky at great speed. They made very little noise. Dapi called the battalion's central operator. Five other soldiers in different air defence units had reported the same thing. The next day, officers questioned them at length. No radar in Albania had picked anything up.
Summer 1990. Northern Albania. Gëzim Dapi was a conscript in an anti-aircraft defence unit posted at Bardhaj, a village near Shkodër. Years later, an interview would describe Dapi as born in Tirana and working as an environmental engineer. The country had other things on its mind. Weeks earlier, thousands of Albanians had taken refuge in foreign embassies in Tirana.