Citation

Sinamati A, Tahiri A, Ymaj B, Ismaili Z, Vyshka G, Cipi B. Torture 2011; 21(3): 197-207.

Affiliation

Institute of Forensic Medicine, Tirana, Albania. Member of the Task Force for the identification of disappeared persons of the communist regime.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

22057111

Abstract

Two decades after the fall of the communism in Albania, documenting the human rights violations and proving torture and cruelties suffered from ex-politically persecuted and dissidents of the regime, is still a societal priority. Due to several reasons, the judicial way toward redressing the historical injustices has been slowed down. This is mainly because of the lack of proper documentation of torture, mass executions and extrajudicial ill-treatment. Several governmental and civil society organizations have tried to define the issue, but perpetrators have rarely, if ever, been brought to court. Secret cemeteries and mass graves have recently been found in different zones of Albania, and victims exhumed; thus proofs of torture and ill-treatments are being made widely known, potentially creating the necessary legal conditions for punishing the perpetrators and for identifying victims. In the present paper, authors describe osteological forensic findings from Linza secret cemetery in Tirana, where several ante mortem fractures prove the severe and cruel ill-treatment the victims suffered before the execution that was usually by bullet shot in the posterior region of the skull.

Language: en