This article is also available in: Shqip Macedonian Bos/Hrv/Srp

Remains discovered in 2010 near Tirana. Photo courtesy of Jovan Plaku.

The government agreed on Wednesday evening to engage the International Commission on Missing Persons to help the authorities to investigate the whereabouts of some of the almost 6,000 Albanians who were killed or disappeared during the 45 years of Communist rule in the country, search for their remains and identify them.

The process is starting almost three decades after the fall of the Communist regime, amid scepticism that it is too late and so far has too little funding.

The EU has granted the ICMP about 450,000 euros for the start of the work, which will cover research in two known grave sites believed to contain unnamed victims. There are dozens more suspected burial sites around the country.

The ICMP, which has worked successfully in several post-conflict countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, opened negotiations with Albania in 2010, after a BIRN investigation showed how families of Communist regime victims struggled to find their loved ones while the authorities ignored their pleas to provide information or help.

However, it took eight years to reach the agreement, which is not yet final. After Wednesday’s approval by the Council of Ministers, the agreement must be approved by parliament before entering into force.

The search will start in the infamous secret graveyard known as Barracks 313 near Tirana, where scores of people were executed or buried during the last decades of Communism.

According to the BIRN investigation, Jovan Plaku, the son of an oil engineer executed in 1976, discovered about a dozen human remains while searching for his father. Eight years later, none of the remains discovered have yet been identified.

The ICMP will start to collect DNA samples from the families of those disappeared to match them with those of the remains.

Another research site will be a graveyard near an oil refinery in Ballshi in south Albania.

The graveyard is believed to contain remains of those who died in the labour camp built to serve the refinery.

After taking power in 1945, the Communist government used prisoners as cheap labour in mines, agriculture and construction.

It refused to hand over the bodies of those who executed to their families for a decent funeral.

Those who died in prison were often buried nearby in unmarked graves.