REPORTER: Nick Lazaredes
In the rugged mountains of Albania, a medieval set of laws has held sway for centuries. Known as the Kanun - these laws have now been mostly abandoned, but one brutal custom remains.
GJIN MARKO, RECONCILIATION COMMITTEE REPORTER (Translation): Blood feuds, for Albanians, imply justice.
I'm on my way into the mountains to find out more about the ruthless eye-for-an-eye justice that's been making a resurgence here.
ELSA BALLAURI, ALBANIAN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP: The cases of blood feuds are growing and we have seen even some real tragedies in the middle of Tirana.
AGIM LOCI (Translation): The latest killings, I'd say, are the consequence of unemployment, hardship and ignorance. I'll do what I can. My mission, with God's will, is to keep people out of trouble, to remove everyone's hassles.
Agim Loci is one of a handful of peacemaking missionaries determined to stamp out the practice of blood feuds.
AGIM LOCI (Translation): I'm negotiating the settlement of a 50-year-old blood feud. There have been four deaths.
While the government has made little progress in quelling this barbaric custom, my translator, Arber, tells me it at least manages to catch some of the perpetrators.
ARBER, TRANSLATOR: This prison is for the region and most of the inmates are inmates that have committed some crime related to blood-feud conflicts.
As we travel deeper into the mountains, it's like travelling back in time. And in this forgotten corner of Europe there are still a few living relics of blood feuds past.
AGIM LOCI (Translation): This is Breganesh village, a village in Krujë.
Agim is here to meet with a Sworn Virgin - a woman who was forced by tradition into a startling transgender transformation - required to act and live as a man.
AGIM LOCI (Translation): Qamile is actually 90. Since she was twelve, she wore... she went from being female... A twelve-year-old girl became a man. She wore a man's waistcoat, hat and trousers. She's carried arms and sat with the men since she was twelve.
Quamile's transformation was sparked by a blood feud decades before. The practice of designating Sworn Virgins has now virtually ceased, leaving just a few dozen living examples.
AGIM LOCI (Translation): Come out, I'm back... I'm here. Now I know where you are, I'll visit often. Come on in. Hey, Qamile Stema, I'm glad you're well. - Welcome... - How are you? - Are you healthy?
Sworn Virgins are a bizarre custom that usually followed the vendetta-related death of a father with no male heirs. In Quamile's case, it was sparked by female cousin breaking off her engagement, well over 70 years ago.
QUAMILE, SWORN VIRGIN (Translation): She was engaged. However the sluts convinced her to leave him. After that they killed my cousin - An eye for an eye - Two of theirs, two of ours. The girl, damn her, died naturally.
Qamile certainly has a man's tongue, as well as a man's clothes. She's relished being the family's father figure, despite the loss of her female identity.
QUAMILE (Translation): To be a woman is a good thing. That's how God made you. I became a sworn virgin and spent my life like this. And I couldn't have had a better life.
ARBER (Translation): Do you regret not getting married and having kids?
QUAMILE (Translation): I don't regret it at all because of the kids you see these days.
ARBER (Translation): No more sworn virgins?
QUAMILE (Translation): No, not many. To be honest, there's none around here. There was one. She had a girl's name but wore men's clothes like these. She had hunting guns and rifles on her. And a watch. Her house was down there. This is Mum. That's Mum with me.
Almost 80 years after taking on the role of her family's protector, Quamile has been left with nothing more than their photos.
QUAMILE (Translation): They're all dead. My three sisters, all dead.
Although women appear to be the innocent victims here, the country's leading blood feud expert says that in fact it's Albanian women who've kept the revenge culture alive.
GJIN MARKO (Translation): Women don't forgive. Men are more forgiving. In Albania, our main hurdle is the women. The dead boy's mother or his sister will say "Even if you forgive them, I'll still take revenge."
As the head of Albania's National Committee for Reconciliation, Gjin Marko oversees the work of peacemakers like Agim. Marko maintains a chilling archive detailing more than two decades of revenge-related violence that's claimed thousands of lives.
GJIN MARKO (Translation): These are the killings registered in the year 2000 broken into districts all overAlbania. It shows that there were 174 killings.
In order to survive, many of those targeted, flee abroad. But according to Gjin Marko, many are eventually tempted to return for brief holidays and so each summer brings a deadly harvest.
GJIN MARKO (Translation): When emigrants return, revenge killings increase. In March this year, an Albanian was deported from Italy. As soon as he returned to Albania He was killed.
Marko's top priority is providing emergency protection for those in danger.
GJIN MARKO (Translation): Right now,1450 families are in hiding, in self-imposed confinement because of blood feuds. Through fear of killings. That's 1450.
To better understand the plight of these families imprisoned by death threats, Agim is taking us to meet the Prengas. They've been on the run for almost a decade after the father shot at a former neighbour who was attacking his wife.
AGIM LOCI (Translation): Llesh grabbed the gun and wounded him severely. The court gave him five years imprisonment for that shooting. He served his term but they didn't forgive him. And they made several attempts to take revenge on him.
Unable to walk beyond the fence-line surrounding the cottage where he and his family are hiding, Llesh Prenga says almost nothing has changed since his release from prison.
LLESH PRENGA (Translation): I did five years in jail but you may as well call this a prison too.
LLesh has already survived several attempts on his life. A few seconds of reckless behaviour by Llesh, years earlier, has turned life into a never-ending nightmare for the entire Prenga family.
LLESH PRENGA (Translation): This is my wife. And my eldest daughter, Ilirjana. That's her, Ilirjana. My second daughter, Donika. My son Gjin and the little one, Lorenc.
Llesh knows that if their location is discovered, it's likely that both of his young sons would be killed along with him.
LLESH PRENGA (Translation): I keep the boys inside. It's different for the girls. I don't let them leave this place. They can visit the neighbours, that's it. You have no guarantee they won't target your son.
Trapped in this small cottage and unable to work to support their family, both Llesh and his wife know that unless the feud is resolved by a mediator like Agim, their misery and isolation is set to continue.
LESH’S WIFE (Translation): If Llesh were in his shoes we'd reconcile, we'd forgive. Because blood feuds never work. The killing goes on and on and on and it gets blown out of proportion. We should recognise the law. Only the law can let us move on.
LLESH PRENGA (Translation): It's ruined me. I've served five years in jail. And now I'm back in jail. This is torture.
Volunteer organisations like the National Committee for Reconciliation have few resources to help families like the Prengas. In fact, according to Gjin Marko, the Albanian Government actively sidelines their efforts.
GJIN MARKO (Translation): The police have a tendency, condoned by the government, to hide corruption and the state's failings. They seek to minimize the numbers or not refer to killings as blood feuds.
Intrigued by what appeared to be a lacklustre effort by the authorities, I arranged to meet the chief of police in Albania's capital, Tirana. He was eager to tell me that the reconciliation committee statistics on blood feuds were highly exaggerated.
TONIN VOCAL, TIRANA POLICE CHIEF IN ALBANIA (Translation): In Albania, although NGOs are involved in reconciliations with the full support of the state's police, the numbers reported by these organisations are often inaccurate, distorting reality. It's best told by the statistics at our disposal.
According to Commander Tonin Vocaj, the practice of blood feuds has been virtually eliminated inAlbania and he scoffed at claims of more than 1,400 families forced into hiding.
TONIN VOCAL (Translation): If we're talking about confinement in it's traditional classical sense as it was specified in the Kanun, or in written history, then things of that kind are unheard of in Albania nowadays.
But blood feuds do exist in Albania and there's a lack of government will to tackle them, according to international NGOs. In fact, Albania's leading human rights defender claims that corruption in the police force and court system has made the problem far worse.
ELSA BALLAURI: This is something we have monitored. We have cases, even in the courts, but the court is very corrupted, and not only the courts, the police are very corrupted.
According to the director of the Albania's Human Rights group, Elsa Ballauri, citizens continue to take the law into their own hands because of a lack of faith in the country's justice system.
ELSA BALLAURI: I don't think the situation is very easy to be solved. People don't feel secure. The police, the police assistance - it's not functioning - they don't care.
With no end to the problem in sight, it's up to mediators like Agim to keep making regular peace missions into the mountains.
AGIM LOCI (Translation): 50 of your family don't speak, but you're one blood-line. That's bad.
Agim's phone is running hot. He's trying to defuse a blood feud between relatives - sparked when a 24-year-old man was murdered by his cousins.
AGIM LOCI (Translation): They tried to take revenge, even dynamiting their home. It was a mess. They fought at the courthouse. They used beer bottles when both sides confronted each other there - A real war.
It's a particularly difficult case, but my translator Arber tells me Agim has managed to achieve a temporary truce.
ARBER: He's made some progress by trying to convince the father of the damaged party that if he kills the person who has made the first killing, then his sons will be open to another killing so there will be an endless cycle.
Breaking these cycles of violence could take decades but Agim is determined to bring a long-lasting peace to these mountains.
AGIM LOCI (Translation): I could say that we have a mission, a humane and noble one... to step in and reconcile.
Reporter/Camera
NICK LAZAREDES
Fixer
ARBER KADIA
Producers
AARON THOMAS
VICTORIA STROBL
Editor
WAYNE LOVE
Translations/Subtitling
SEIDE RAMADANI