TIRANA, July 7 /ATA/ Minister of Justice, Etilda Gjonaj, stated on Wednesday that “we have a completely reformed criminal justice system in place, which guarantees the principles and standards of independence and impartiality, transparency and professionalism.”
Gjonaj attended the conference on Wednesday the conference entitled “Strengthening of criminal justice through close cooperation of justice institutions,” which brought together the US Ambassador, Yuri Kim, the head of SPAK, Arben Kraja, the General Prosecutor, Olsian Çela, the chairman of HPC, Genti Ibrahimi.
Gjonaj stressed that “5 years from the approval of the Justice Reform, we are witness to an extraordinary work not only in the drafting and approval of a whole legal corpus, but also in the establishment of a new justice architecture and setting to operation the new institutions, no matter all the setbacks and impediments in every link of its implementation. ”
“Justice Reform was a vital need not only for the justice system itself, but also for the functioning of the rule of law in Albania, and this was even more evident in the criminal justice system. The functioning of the previous prosecution system, as a centralized and hierarchical system, with no control mechanism, in Albania was a failure. A system that did not guarantee the internal independence of prosecutors, a system that did not address the current challenges of crime and organized crime and corruption in particular, a system easily influenced by politics or even crime, which proved day to day that it did not guarantee a fair prosecution and respect for personal freedoms and human rights, which gave way to impunity, causing the Albanian citizens to lose their confidence in the justice system,” the Minister said.
Gjonaj stressed that “we are all witnesses that the independence of the prosecutor in relation to the hierarchical authority was limited, putting obstacles in the way of prosecutors with courage and integrity trying to fully prosecute and bring to justice any offender.”
We put this down to the direct dependence of the prosecutor’s career with many of them transferred without any reason.
“I made this brief overview of the previous system to illustrate the point that today we do not just have the new laws and the new architecture of the justice system, we do not only have the new institutions in place, and new people elected through transparent and unbiased processes. We have a completely changed criminal justice system, which guarantees the principles and standards of independence and impartiality, transparency and professionalism,” the Minister said.
Gjonaj said that “the external and internal independence of the prosecutor in the criminal prosecution is already guaranteed by the new system, just as their appointment, transfer, merit-based and transparent promotion is already guaranteed, completely free from the old rule of executing or not the orders of superiors. ”
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