Release comes six years after deadly explosion at munitions disposal site
TIRANA, March 3 – A Tirana court has granted early release from prison to one of the officials convicted on charges relating the Gerdec explosion in 2008.
The former head of the Defense Ministry’s weapons department, Ylli Pinari, had two years and three months left to serve on the sentence. No official explanation was given for the release. His lawyer had argued Pinari’s advanced age and the need to care for an ill family member were reasons that the judge should grant early release.
Pinari was part of a group of people who went to trial to face charges on the series of explosions that killed 26 at an ammunition disposal factory six years ago.
Pinari and a senior manager at the private ammunition disposal factory, Dritan Minxolli, were each sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. Later the appeals court lowered it to 10 years for Pinari.
The courts have sentenced 19 people to prison from one to 18 years imprisonment, but angry relatives of the victims insist the punishments were far too lenient and that top government officials have avoided justice.
Murder charges initially brought against them were dropped. Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment for three of the defendants.
Fatmir Mediu, who was defense minister at the time of the blasts and later environment minister, had been charged, but they were dropped in 2009 after he was re-elected to parliament, regaining immunity from prosecution for a time. The same charges that were raised again by the victims’ relatives only to be dropped by prosecutors.
Some 300 more people were injured and 5,500 nearby homes damaged or destroyed in the explosions on March 15, 2008, at the disposal factory in Gerdec, near Tirana, the capital. The blasts sent shrapnel and shell fragments raining down on homes and vehicles, and houses more than a mile away were damaged by the blast.
Some relatives of the blast victims were outraged by the verdicts, and maintained that officials including the then-defense minister, had not been properly held to account.
The Socialists, then in opposition, blamed the deadly explosions on corrupt officials in the ruling conservative coalition of the then-Prime Minister Sali Berisha of the Democratic Party, claiming they ignored safety regulations while profiting from the disposal of obsolete Communist-era weapons from China and Russia.
