Albania protests at shooting
TIRANA (AP) – Albania yesterday lodged an official protest over a Greek police border guard’s killing of an Albanian who had illegally crossed the border, saying Tirana considers the shooting a human rights violation. A Greek police border guard late on Tuesday killed the 19-year-old man when he fired two warning shots in the dark in an attempt to stop two Albanian men trying to escape arrest after entering Greece illegally. The youth was hit in the head, police said. Albanian Foreign Ministry official Dashnor Dervishi said he told Greece’s charge d’affaires in Albania, Anastasia Athanassiou, in a meeting yesterday that illegal immigrants often face physical abuse from Greek border guards and police. Dervishi said Greek police last week beat three Albanian illegal immigrants so severely that one had to have a kidney removed. He urged Greek border guards to be more careful. The guard who fired the lethal shot was charged with murder following the incident near the town of Kastoria, 512 kilometers (317 miles) north of Athens.
