Gerdec families worried over possible amnesty

TIRANA, Nov. 08 – The families of the dead victims of the Gerdec blast more than four years ago raised loud their voice Wednesday saying that the amnesty that the government is trying to make for the country’s 100th independence anniversary is also made to avoid further prosecution and punishment for the authors of the blast.
The government has sent a draft law to the parliament on the amnesty that will cover almost 3,000 prisoners or prosecuted persons.
Twenty-six persons died in the March 15, 2008 blast at the private ammunition disposal factory close to capital Tirana.
Earlier this year, the court sentenced 19 people to prison for a series of explosions at an ammunition disposal factory that killed 26 people. Then, in March, angry relatives of the victims also insisted the punishments were far too lenient and that top government officials have avoided justice.
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.
The Tirana court issued the guilty verdicts for 19 defendants, sentencing them to between one and 18 years on charges of gross mismanagement and related offenses, while nine others were cleared. Murder charges initially brought against them were dropped.
The amnesty will release all those who have been sentenced up to two years imprisonment.
Fatmir Mediu, who was defense minister at the time of the blasts and is the current environment minister, had been charged, but they were dropped in 2009 after he was re-elected to Parliament. He is now being prosecuted for a charge of “serious injury” and the families complain how the court can do that at a time when 26 people died in that blast.
The victims’ families have sent a letter to the parliament asking it not to pass the amnesty law as it is done by the government. They also say that if the process is also completed at the Appeals Court in Tirana before Nov. 28 it will reduce the sentence to many other authors of the blast who are already sentenced now from the Tirana court.
They want that the amnesty should exclude all the persons and charges linked to the Gerdec blast.