Serbia says no Serbian prisoners should be sent to Albania

THE HAGUE, Oct 13 – After Albania signed a deal with the Hague Tribunal as a host country for convicted war criminals, Serbia protested saying the tiny Balkan country had not good living standards in its prisons.
Serbian official in charge of cooperation with the tribunal Dusan Ignjatovic sent a note of protest to Tribunal Secretary Hans Holthuis considering that “a very bad decision. Apart from the obvious reasons, there are also concerns about the conditions in Albanian prisons.”
to justify that note he also mentioned that the U.S. State Department’s report on human rights in Albania for 2007, as well as Amnesty International’s report for the same year, had pointed out that one of the gravest issues in Albania as concerned human rights was the state of the country’s prisons.
“We will insist that none of our citizens sentenced by the Tribunal serve their sentences in Albania,” Ignjatovic said.
Last month Albania became the seventeenth country to allow people convicted by the Tribunal to serve their sentences elsewhere.
Other countries that have previously signed this agreement are: Italy, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Austria, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Denmark, United Kingdom, Belgium, Ukraine, Portugal, Estonia and Slovakia.