Albania opens murder investigation into the deaths of 4 Russians
TIRANA, Albania (AP) – Albanian prosecutors said on Thursday they opened a murder investigation into the deaths of four Russian tourists at a local resort last month.
The four Russians – a married couple, their daughter and son-in-law – were found dead in the sauna of a hotel in the village of Qerret, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the capital Tirana, on October 15.
The first indications were that they died of asphyxiation, but the circumstances were not clear and no official coroner’s report was made public.
Prosecutors said in a statement Thursday that they had recorded the case as “murder in other admissible circumstances”, adding that they were evaluating the evidence and the evidence of the testimony. They did not give more details.
The bodies were returned to Russia a week after their discovery. The Russian embassy in Tirana had said that tests would be carried out on the remains “to discover the cause of their death”.
Russian tourists, aged 31 to 60, were part of a group that had been staying at the five-star resort for a week.
Tourism is now a major industry in Albania, a small country in the Western Balkans with 300 miles of coastline.