Domestic violence against women increased during lockdown. The Prime Minister threatened to use extraordinary powers to close media for “spreading panic” over COVID-19. Roma and LGBTI people continued to face discrimination.

Roma families were evicted on 7 August and are now homeless. Neither the Tirana municipal authorities nor the government have done anything to assist them or provide them with alternative housing.

Around 37 Roma families in Albania are being threatened with forced eviction. The land where they live is about to be redeveloped. The landowner has not respected procedures set out in law, and the authorities have not taken measures to provide the Roma with any alternative housing.

Eight Roma families, some 50 people, have been violently evicted from the former military barracks where they had recently been resettled, on the outskirts of the capital, Tirana. Police brought four families back to the barracks, but they have since fled. The other four families refused to return.

On 8 May 2012, eight Romani families, numbering some 50 individuals, moved with a police escort, from the premises of the Albanian Romani Association in the Albanian capital Tirana, to buildings which were partially renovated for their permanent accommodation. Their housing remains severely...

On 12 February, nine Romani families from the Babrru tent site moved from the Albanian Ombudsperson’s Office – where they had taken shelter after leaving Babrru – to the premises of the Romani Baxt Albania (RBA, Albanian Romani Association) in Tirana.

Around 25 Romani families have been made homeless, after local authorities obliged them to dismantle the sheds in which they were living at a site in Tirana, Albania’s capital.

Nine homeless Romani families temporarily settled by the Albanian authorities in tents on private land have been threatened with imminent forced eviction. No adequate alternative housing has been offered to these families.

On 16 November a Slovenian court ruled against the transfer of Ali Berisha and his family to Germany, where they would be at risk of being removed to Kosovo. The court annulled two decrees from the Slovenian Ministry of the Interior which had stated that the family should be deported, and stated...

Ali Berisha (m), aged about 36, his wife Mahi (aged 36) and their four children, Dem (m), aged 8, Egzon (m), aged 6, Egzona (f), aged 4 and Haxhi (m), aged 3, all members of the Romani/Ashkali/Egyptiani (RAE) minority community, are at imminent risk of being forcibly removed from Slovenia to...

Amnesty International fears that Abd al-Mu’min Na’im and Muhammad Naguib Yassin, who were arrested in Albania on 15 February 1999, are at risk of being forcibly returned to Egypt where they would be at risk of torture.

Ahmed Isma’il Othman was returned to Egypt by the Albanian authorities on 25 August 1998. He now faces a military trial along with 106 others.AI is concerned that he will not receive a fair trial and could be sentenced to death.

Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar, Mohammad Huda, Mohammad Hassan Mahmoud and Magid Mostafa have recently been transferred to the High Security Prison in Tora where the risks to them are less. They are among a group of members of al-Gihad being questioned by the military prosecution along with...