38 The Unfinished Business of rT ansitional Justice: Reparation of oF rmer Political Prisoners in Post-Communist Albania METHODOLOGY This research paper focuses on former political prisoners of Albanian’s past communist regime and the grave human rights violations they have suffered. The first part explores Albania’s policy approach and legal framework on reparation measures, and forms of reparation. The second part of the paper aims to explore the former political prisoners’ needs and how they can be addressed. It analyses twenty semi-structured interviews conducted with former political prisoners. The methodology for selecting respondents is based on snowball sampling, therefore, the qualitative data analyzed in the second part reflects the views of the interviewees and their representativeness is limited. Former political prisoners are a category of individuals difficult to identify and locate, majority of them for biological reasons do not live anymore. Additionally, there is no database of former political prisoners which can be taken as a reference. Some of the interviewees were reached through the local associations of former political prisoners. The semi-structured interview questionnaire was designed to understand to the extent possible the suffering of victims and to collect data regarding their reparation experience and their needs to heal the past, how their needs have shaped the measures taken until now and the measures to address them. Semi-structured interviews were deemed the most appropriate tool to identify victims’ perceptions, their needs and factors that impact their reparation. Twenty interviews were conducted in four different cities of Albania with former political prisoners. All interviews are male46 and suffered detention in different prisons during the communist regime, the majority in Spaç and Burrel. The earliest interviewee was imprisoned in 1951 and the most recent in 1986. Sixteen of the interviewees are retired and their background varies, five are teachers by profession, two engineers, one a vet. However, some of the interviewees were arrested at an early age or during military service and were never able to access a profession. Each interview was recorded after receiving the written consent of the interviewee. In total, more than 18-hours of audio recording was collected. During interviews, most of the interviewees showed enthusiasm toward the research and shared books, written memories or court documents detailing their stories and sufferings. The processing of the data consisted of the transcription of all interviews and categorization of responses in a separate memo according to the themes that emerged from analysis of the content. The analysis in the second chapter is based on the themes derived from the data processed from interviews. ANALYSIS OF THE INTERVIEW DATA Prison Experience Political prisoners under the communist regime were accused of having committed ‘political crimes’ under different laws of the time which were used by communists to exercise absolute control over the population and shut down any critical voice. The regime used the laws of the time to arrest and purge intellectuals and scientists under the accusation of (economic) sabotage and crimes against people and state.47 The majority of the interviewees were convicted of ‘agitation and propaganda against the state’, ‘high state treason’, attempting to escape from Albania and 46. Women as well as men were politically persecuted during the communist regime, but the experiences of women in political prisons has received less attention and barely culturally or politically recognized in Albania. See further: Shannon Woodcock, ‘Albania’s Women Political Prisoners’ Struggle to be Heard (2014) 20 CSR 2 47. Law no.7514, dated 30.9.1991 for the Innocence, Amnesty and Rehabilitation of Former Political Convicted and Prosecuted