More than 20 percent of arrests of protesters in recent weeks have been deemed unlawful by Tirana prosecutors and the court, exposing repressive practices by the State Police that violate the law and human rights.
Since October 13, when anti-government protests took a turn toward violent clashes, the State Police have arrested hundreds of young protesters, including minors.
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Of the 319 protesters arrested by October 31, 291 appeared before a court for a review of the measures imposed on them.
But data obtained by BIRN show that 62 arrests, or more than 21 percent of the total, were deemed unlawful by Tirana’s court or directly by prosecutors.
Those arrested included 38 minors, six of whom the court found had been detained unlawfully. By October 27, police had also initiated criminal proceedings against another 653 protesters, including 179 minors.
Of those arrested, Tirana’s court ordered pretrial detention in only 12 cases, while eight others were placed under house arrest.
Most protesters (157) were ordered to report to the authorities, while another 18 were ordered to stay away from the areas where the protests take place.
The escalation of the protests involving students and young people since October 13 has raised concerns not only about the spread of violence but also about the State Police’s disproportionate response.
Police have not officially acknowledged using disproportionate measures. But on October 22, the deputy director for Public Security at Tirana Police instructed police stations to comply with criminal legislation concerning minors when taking them into custody, searching them and taking their statements — a step back from the methods used to deal with underage protesters and arbitrarily search their phones.
Even so, the documented police response and the high proportion of arrests deemed unlawful by the court have raised concerns about the limits of the State Police’s powers in relation to the right to peaceful protest.
No legal safeguards
Lawyer Gentian Serjani has represented dozens of protesters detained or arrested during the protests of recent weeks and recalls many instances of unlawful conduct. In one case, he recalls several protesters being held for 11 hours at Police Station No. 1 in Tirana, where, he says, they were deprived of water, food and cigarettes.
“They were taken in without any lawful reason,” the lawyer told BIRN.
“Another violation concerns the lack of evidence that would justify arresting and holding people for 72 hours. The court has also confirmed this in several cases when it declared the arrests unlawful,” Serjani said.
Like Serjani, lawyer Lulzim Tanushi claims that the State Police failed to respect legal safeguards concerning the conditions for arrest in the act or reasonable suspicion when informing people that they had been placed under arrest.
According to him, people who were not involved in violence or had no connection to the protest were also arrested.
“In most cases, people who had no connection to the protest or had not engaged in violent acts were taken to the police station, detained and arrested in the act,” Tanushi said.
“Brutal violence was used without legal justification after the detained person had been restrained. Violence was used during detention and in the vehicles used to transport detainees,” Tanushi added, noting that the detentions were carried out by police officers who had not identified themselves.
According to Tanushi, there were also problems when statements were taken, with police officers resorting to intimidation and threats.
In the case of one of his clients, Tanushi said, a judicial police officer went to the hospital at 3 a.m. and asked the client to sign the record of his arrest in the act without a lawyer present.
Tanushi describes a pattern of police conduct that, he says, follows political orders rather than the law.
Lawyer Dorina Aluku Lamaj also lists violations that she says concern the legality of taking her protesting clients into custody.
“In almost all cases, people were taken into custody and arrested without a clear and individualized legal basis. One of the main problems was the lack of concrete, individual evidence to justify restricting the liberty of specific people,” Lamaj said.
“The fact that an individual is at a protest during which other people may have committed unlawful acts does not automatically make that individual criminally responsible,” she argued.
Lamaj says she has obtained testimony about brutal violence against protesters involving tear gas, rubber bullets and batons with iron rods.
“All these problems raise a fundamental concern: Are the police acting on the basis of concrete evidence and individual responsibility, or is arrest being used as a response to participation in a protest?” she said.
Human rights violations
The lawyers who defended protesters in court allege widespread human rights violations through “unlawful deprivation of liberty” and “infringement of the right to peaceful protest.”
In dozens of cases already reviewed by the court or prosecutors, people were deprived of their liberty without concrete evidence — a situation that also restricted their right to protest.
Lawyer Gentian Serjani also told BIRN that police intimidated students by the way they summoned them to give statements at police stations, without making clear in what capacity or under what procedural status they were being questioned.
“This constitutes another form of intimidation aimed at discouraging them from exercising their right to protest,” Serjani added.
Lawyer Lulzim Tanushi likewise says he has seen human rights violations every day during arrests at protests, which he describes as widespread and repeated. He recounts several cases that, he says, show violence amounting to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment.
He adds that the situation is made worse by cases in which police dispersed protests violently, using tear gas indiscriminately on a large scale and pursuing and intimidating citizens through the streets of Tirana.
“These police actions have directly hindered the exercise of the constitutional right to protest peacefully,” he said.
According to Tanushi, there have also been violations in the treatment of minors, chiefly through physical and psychological violence.
“Most of them were beaten… It was found that most of the minors’ phones had been unlocked. This is easily demonstrated by the records of the phones’ seizure, which in most cases also note the phones’ passcodes. It is troubling that things went this far,” he said.
He considers it a serious violation that minors were held in cells at the Security Block beyond its capacity, forcing them to sleep on the floor. He also cites a case in which minors were detained and made to lie on the floor inside the Ministry of Education building.
“Those images are very disturbing and show the grave extent of the unlawful treatment of minors,” Tanushi said.
The lawyers say they will pursue these matters through legal channels and are calling for the police’s actions to be reviewed and investigated. /BIRN
