TIRANA, Oct  7  /ATA/ The Parliamentary Committee for Legal Affairs, Public Administration and Human Rights reviewed Friday the draft law “On an amendment to the law no. 45/2015 “On the Right to Information about the documents of the Former State Security of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania”, amended.

The Democratic Party MP, Gazment Bardhi, said that “what we approved only an hour ago says that, exceptionally, the documents of the former State Security are considered declassified, so a decision of the Authority is no longer needed.”

“Suffice it to file a request for information and it will be made available to every citizen of the Republic of Albania. If we do not agree on this, the declassification we have made is completely inapplicable, so we have not declassified anything and again the files are locked up, so it is either the collaborators or the affected persons that enjoy the right to receive information. They have this right even today,” said Bardhi.

“At the core of our proposal is the opening of dossiers. We want to believe that we have agreed to fully open them. We approved their declassification and in this law we should guarantee the right of every citizen to access information,” said Bardhi.

Also present at this session was the head of the Dossier Authority, Genta Sula, who said that the Albanian law has been designed taking into account the German law, which provides for a very good channel to allow any citizen who is interested in accessing the documents of the former State Security. Anyone with a research question can approach us. Every citizen, even if he is not affected, can show up but needs to elaborate on the research question. In article 37 and 38, barriers have loosened for every person. And I think it’s a lot of freedom.”

/sm/