Gerdec defendants on trial May 4

TIRANA, March 30 – The 28 persons accused of the Gerdec blast will be on trial May 4, according to the Supreme Court.
They include former Defense Minister Fatmir Mediu, ex-army chief-of-staff Luan Hoxha, some generals and ministry officials, and also owner and a manager of the private ammunition disposal company. Four of them have been accused of murder besides the abuse of post that is the general charge for all of them.
If proved guilty they may be sentenced up to eight years of imprisonment for the abuse of post charge, or life imprisonment for murder.
All have denied any wrongdoing.
On March 15, 2008, a series of explosions killed 26 people, injured 264 and destroyed or damaged 5,500 houses.
The plant is one of the Albanian army’s factories used to dispose of ammunition kept in storage across the Balkan country since the communist regime fell in 1990.
A judicial investigation has established the cause as human error, but the government has said the explosions were accidentally triggered during disposal of aging Communist-era ammunition. The opposition has accused the government of corruption in the disposal of obsolete weapons.
Estimates published by the Albanian government say the explosion caused more than 15 million Euros in damage to the surrounding area. The explosions began when workers were moving stocks of old Chinese and Soviet shells stored at the base, a central collection point for the arsenal amassed by the communist-era dictatorship of Enver Hoxha.
About 100,000 tons of excess ammunition, mostly Russian and Chinese artillery shells made in the 1960s or earlier, are stored in former army depots across Albania, which has pledged to dispose of them by 2010 with the assistance from the U.S., Canada and other NATO countries.