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The Dossier Authority launches an "administrative" investigation into 44 missing persons from the Spaçi prison

Politiko 2023-06-02 18:37:55

The Dossier Authority launches an "administrative" investigation into

Thirty years after the last prisoner was released from the infamous Spaç camp in the Mirdita area of Albania, a state institution announced that it plans to investigate the fate of at least 44 prisoners who, according to archival information gathered so far, were executed and were buried in unmarked graves in order to deny the family members the opportunity to pay their last respects to the deceased and to deny the victim a dignified burial.

The Authority for Information on Ex-Security Documents announced on Friday that it has set up a working group, through which it is intended to start research in the field, after archival information on the dead has been collected in advance.

However, the authority pointed out that the investigation will be of an "administrative" nature. In Albania, unlike many other Eastern European countries, the crimes of communist officials have not been investigated, and Albanian prosecutors have repeatedly announced that they see no reason to investigate, despite the fact that the European Union has considered it an obstacle to the integration of Albania, the failure of the prosecutor's offices to open ex officio investigations into the cases of missing Albanians during Communism.

"From the searches made in the documents found in the Authority, or in other institutions, such as the General Directorate of Prisons, the Ministry of the Interior, the General Directorate of Archives, there are 44 (forty-four) ex-convicts who have been executed, killed or died from torture and diseases while serving their sentence, accidents at work or in escape attempts," the Authority stated in a press release.

"According to the preliminary investigations of the working group, such facts were obtained as: Persons who were executed, or died while serving their sentence, were buried by the prison staff in places outside the prison territory, making it impossible for their relatives, in any case that to take the body; the places that served as burial grounds for the prisoners who lost their lives in Spaç are suspected to be near the cemetery of the village of Shpal, in the village of Gëziq, Kodër Spaç, about 1 km south-west of Spaç Prison; as well as in some cases the executions were carried out in places where the only criterion was the distance from residential areas," the decision reads further.

The Authority for Information on Former Security Documents was created by the Parliament of Albania in 2015 with a special law, with the aim of managing the archive of the State Security, the notorious secret police, whose crimes remain uninvestigated and the archive of which continues to remain a state secret, even though three decades have already passed since the fall of communism.

The European Parliament in the annual project resolution for Albania this year asked the Albanian authorities to declassify these documents and ensure the access of the general public and researchers to them. Reporter.al