Specific treatment for detainees

Halimi declared that the memorandum predicts the engagement of both ministries for finding the necessary finances and for establishing a special center for treating the mentally challenged detainees.

The Minister of Justice, Eduard Halimi, reiterated that the training of the mentally challenged detainees is one of the EU recommendations for Albania.

Both ministers signed the cooperation memorandum that will have to realize the commitments very soon.

Police brutality on minors

The Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, during a report published this Tuesday in Strasbourg, has identified police brutality against many people, including minors, with punches, kicks and batons.

The report states that the pretrial detention conditions are horribly poor in most of the police institutions, with destroyed cells that have none or very limited natural light and poor artificial illumination and air ventilation.

The same report quotes the reaction of the Albanian authorities, who claim that most of the police premises are under partial or complete reconstruction.

The report describes as “horrible” the holding cells in Kukes, and mentions the overpopulation at the Prison 313 in Tirana. It considers as very poor the material situation at the Burrel Prison and Shkoder Psychiatric Hospital.

In contrast with these surveys, the report values the conditions of the newly constructed Reintegration Center of Minors in Durres. In a positive note for the situation in Albania, the report underlines that the relations between the personnel and the detainees were very calm and violence among the prisoners was not a big problem, and that most of the interviewed people on May 2010 declared that they were correctly trained by the police. 

Top Channel