Albania Approves Agreement on Finding the Bones of Communist Missing Ones

The deal, approved by the government Wednesday, will engage the International Commission for Missing People (ICMP) to investigate, seek and identify a portion of the nearly 6 thousand Albanians who were killed or disappeared during the 45-year communist rule in the country -- a process that is launching nearly three decades after the regime collapsed, amid scepticism that the process has started too late and currently has scarce funds.

The ICMP has received a grant from the European Union of about 450 thousand euros for the start of the work, which will cover the search at two well-known locations -- Kazermat 313 near Tirana and graves near the former forced labour camp in Balls, from several dozen suspected countries.

The International Commission on Missing People has been established in 1996 and has since been engaged in many countries that have endured bloody wars or experienced severe dictatorships such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Libya, to search for people lost in conflict, dictatorships or natural disasters.

The ICMP offered assistance to Albania initially in 2010 after an investigation by the Balkan Investigative Network found out how the victims' families tried to discover the fate of their people while authorities were deaf to their requests for information or assistance. Following approval by the Council of Ministers, the agreement will have to be passed on parliamentary procedures before it goes into effect.

The search will begin with the infamous cemetery known as “barracks 313” on the outskirts of Tirana under Dajti Mountain, where a considerable number of people have been buried in secret after being executed during the years 50 and 80. According to the BIRN investigation, Jovan the Elder, son of oil engineer Kocho the Elder, executed in 1976, was searching for his father's remains when he discovered the twelve buried there. Eight years later, none of the found have yet been identified.

The ICMP will start collecting DNA samples from missing family in order to match them with the DNA of the missing. Another search site will be the cemetery near the former forced labour camp in Balls, south of Albania. This cemetery is believed to carry the remains of those who died in the labor camp built on behalf of the refinery. Communist Albania used prisoners as free labor wings in mines, agriculture and construction.

Since assuming power in 1945, the Communist government refused to give families the bodies of those executed with the intention of denying a funeral. Those who died in prisons were often buried in the area around prisons in unmarked graves.