Constitutional Court annuls controversial lustration law

TIRANA, Feb. 2 – The Constitutional Court has annulled a controversial law on lustration, which had come under harsh criticism from the association of prosecutors and judges as well as from western capitals.
The Constitutional Court overturned the law barring communist-era secret police informants from holding public office.
An opposition Socialist Party complaint was filed a year ago after the law raised concerns about the standards of democracy and political dialogue as well the independence of the judiciary.
The European Union, the Council of Europe and the United States all criticized the law.
Critics said that the law was unconstitutional because it allowed a special commission to fire judges and prosecutors who served during the former communist regime without due process in the judicial system.
The commission did not need to prove the officials were guilty of any crime, and the opposition said that this allowed the government to fire prosecutors investigating high-profile corruption cases.
If put into force the law could have wiped out half of Albania’s supreme court and constitutional court, throwing the justice system into crisis.
The Council of Europe experts also said several issues had to be reconsidered, including the very broad reach of the law in terms of the categories of officials affected, the fact that it includes people currently in office, the fairness and proportionality of the lustration proceedings, the severity of the sanctions foreseen and the fact that there is no time limit on the law.
The legislation denied political office until 2014 to former members of bodies involved in violence under the Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha, who died in 1985, and those who informed for his notorious Sigurimi secret service.
Experts disagree on how many Albanians worked as informants or helped the Sigurimi, but it was a vast network essential to maintaining control over the Adriatic state which broke with the rest of the Communist world.
Candidates for high office have already been screened since the 1990s after Albania toppled communism.
Albania has never fully opened its secret police files as Germany did after unification with the former Communist east.
The Albanian government turned a deaf ear to Western criticism, prompting the EU, which Albania wants to join, to ask for broad consultations across the political spectrum.
The opposition immediately reacted considering the law as a ploy to sideline rivals during election campaigns and to remove prosecutors investigating official corruption.
At the same time the association of the former persecuted harshly condemened the Court’s verdict saying that six out of nine Court judges would be soon removed as their mandate expired, thus doing their last work to the former communist leaders.
The move for sure is to be turned into a poltiical issue with opposing sides accusing each other, thus threatening also a revision of the law.