E.K's story

E.K, aged 16, a student in the second grade of the foreign languages secondary school “Asim Vokshi” in Tirana, on September 2/2004, was called and detained by the judicial police officer in the Police Station Nr 3, Tirane, together with his eleven class mates.

The reason for his detention was an accusation from one of his teachers that he and his mates had sent her a handwritten menacing letter that endangered her professional life. According to E.K’s mother’s complaint to SCR, the child had been detained without being accompanied by his parents, or legal caregiver, and was asked to testify without the presence of a legal representative upon the accusation.

During the time that E.K had been detained, he suffered from abusive behaviour from the police. He had been forced to make declarations, to provide written proof in relation to his handwriting, to provide the police with his finger prints and was forcefully taken for an identification procedure during which time that child was deprived of his liberty, he suffered verbal offences, psychological pressure and was beaten by the police officers. To add to the degrading treatment of the child by the police, he was also subjected to being kept for about 30 minutes in a detention cell together with two detained adults.

SCR experts after working on this case, proved that all the complaints presented by the mother in relation to the treatment of her child from the police, were true. It also resulted that the authors of the threatening letter sent to the teacher were three other students and not E.K.

The best interest of the child was the main tool in the investigative work of these experts. They consulted the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Constitution of the Republic of Albania, from which they identified several rights were being infringed in this case by the police officers. The experts provided evidence that the judicial police officer, in absence of the child’s parents, had taken the child’s handwriting proof with the aim of comparing it with the handwriting on the menacing letter.

Also, SCR experts collected proof that the child had been treated as the wrongdoer by the police, without having any proof of his guilt. To protect the child’s dignity and to prevent violations of this nature in the future, OPA and SCR recommended to the Police Director of Tirana District the immediate need for the application of disciplinary measures towards the judicial police officer who led the procedures against the child, as well as towards the other police officers involved. The recommendation was accepted and disciplinary measures were applied towards the judicial police officer.

SCR sent a recommendation to the Minister of Public Order asking for protection of children from violations of their rights by the police in accordance to national and international laws and measures.

(This case extract is taken by SCR case treated records)