21 January, EC Committee asks for independent investigations

The Committee of Prevention of Torture, regarding the violence against protesters and also the refusal of Albanian authorities to answer if this behavior is being investigated or not, has demanded a concrete answer by the Albanian government within three months, and also for the concrete measures to be taken.
“For this, we recommend the establishment of an independent group that will investigate the violence and the way these persons were taken under custody on January 21st”.
As for their mistreatment, CPT is based on the declarations given by the persons taken under custody. When investigated by the delegation, they claimed of having been mistreated by police officers and especially at the Police Department 1, 2 and 4. Most of the people that were questioned declared that they were hit with punches and rubber sticks even when they were inside the police department. One police chief has even hit one of the people under custody at the hall of the court.

The delegation says in this report of having secured a great number of declarations, where the police are accused of having obliged the detainees to sign and admit their guilt.
“Many of the people that were taken under custody declare that when they were being hit, the police officers said phrases like ‘you have hit a police officer’. This indicates that their justification for the mistreatment was some kind of repayment for the damages caused to the police”, the report says.

CTP also emphasized the role of the prosecution and the court in cases when people have made formal complaints for police mistreatments, and no one has ever answered to them.
 

“The delegation has collected several accusations from people that have been under custody. They say that they were left for more than two days without food inside the premises of the police. CTP wants to receive the necessary comments from the Albanian government on this matter.

“The committee asks the Albanian authorities to undertake effective steps to guarantee the basic rights for all people that will be taken under the police custody, like the right to call a family member in order to access a defending lawyer from the moment of their arrest. Facts suggest that a great number of people have been arrested in the same period of time, and their basic rights have been denied to them”, the report says.

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