Ex-Defense Minister Indicted of Gerdec Blast

TIRANA, Feb 11 – Less than a year after the March 15 blast Albanian prosecutors charged the former Defense Minister Fatmir Mediu, ex-army chief Lt. Gen. Luan Shehu and nine other top civil and military officials of abuse of post.
The accident last year caused massive explosions at an ammunition disposal factory that killed 26 people and injured 300. Some 5,500 households and business buildings were also damaged or destroyed.
Mediu and the other defendants were summoned to be communicated the abuse of post charge.
In total there were eleven military and civilian officials of the Defense Ministry charged with the abuse of post.
Prosecutors have questioned their selection of a site for the disposal factory so near the capital and also about the way they used military trucks to transport ammunition to the disposal factory.
They could be sentenced up to seven years imprisonment if charges are proved, according to the penal code.
Albania’s defense minister and army chief resigned after the disaster, which prompted calls from opposition parties for conservative Prime Minister Sali Berisha to resign.
Three other people _ a Defense Ministry employee, owner of the disposal factory and its manager _ have been charged with murder.
Only last week Berisha ‘shot’ a warning to the prosecutors: Mediu was not to blame. They should turn their eyes to find the responsible persons to the military. That was clearly spelled by the premier at an interview to the Voice of America while he was on a trip to the United States.
That has also been long hinted by Mediu who also reacted nervously against the eagerness of the prosecutors to charge him.
The military angrily responded saying that they did what they were asked for by the minister.
The issue, that is an open scandal ringing very loudly its bells against politics, has been running almost daily in the country. It is linked to many other developments, much of them political ones.
Last month the lustration law on the former collaborators and other agents during the former communist regime and linked to the secret police Sigurimi turned into a good play. Berisha and his coalition strongly said it should be applied and many former prosecutors and judges should be fired. It is yet to start to be applied but in a first sign Prosecutor general Ina Rama moved Zamir Shtylla, her close aide, to a different post as prosecutor in another city. Shtylla was the head of the investigation team of the Gerdec blast.
The series of massive blasts near Tirana, Albania’s capital, on March 15 last year killed 26 people and injured more than 300. Although a judicial investigation has yet to establish the cause, the government has said the explosions were accidentally triggered during work to dispose of aging Communist-era ammunition.
Opposition Socialists claim the governing Democrats have tried to prevent an impartial investigation by exerting pressure on Albania’s judiciary and have accused the government of Prime Minister Sali Berisha of corruption regarding the disposal of obsolete weapons.
About 100,000 tons of excess ammunition, mostly Russian and Chinese artillery shells made in the 1960s or earlier, are stored in old army depots across formerly communist Albania.