Several locals had been hired under the supervision of the Greek Orthodox Priest, Vasil Thomollari, to exhume complete human skeletal remains in the village’s old cemetery at EUR 100 per set, according to the daily newspaper Gazeta Shqiptare.

The Albanian media claims that the exhumed skeletal remains belong to old Albanian tombs, however their trafficking was made under the claim that the remains are those of Greek soldiers killed during the Italian-Greek war of 1941. The scandal was first denounced by a local television (in Gjirokastra), while other sources claims that the journalist that reported was excommunicated by priest Thomollari.

Several weeks ago, Athens threatened to politically boycott Albania because the government of Tirana had delayed the permit for the burial of Greek soldiers from the World War II in a mausoleum constructed for this purpose near the town of Këlcyrë in the south of Albania.

Meanwhile, the Albanian government claimed it did not have any intentions to block the construction of such a mausoleum.

Albanian analysts claim that what is happening is a dirty Greek nationalistic war to establish religious symbols in the context of territorial claims in the south of Albania (considers as Northern Epirus by nationalist Greeks).