The bodies exhumed from a village around Përmet in 2006 and alleged to be those of Greek soldiers were returned to Albania in a secret ceremony held away from the eyes of the media.
The Greek Consulate General in Gjirokastra, the Director of Albanian Prefectures, and the Mayor of Gjirokastra, as well as senior officials from the Ministry of Defense participated in the ceremony.
In 2006, 108 bodies were illegally exhumed from the Church of Saint Mary in the village of Kosina.
The illegal exhumation was considered a scandal at the time it happened. 6 people were interrogated while the village priest refused to give a statement on the matter. There were allegations that the bodies were exhumed for €100 each.
The villagers of Përmet denounced the fact that their ancestors were exhumed from the village cemetery. They argued that the exhumation was done so that the Greek government could artificially inflate the number of Greek soldiers martyred on Albanian territory and for whom the Government of Athens had requested the construction of three cemeteries in Përmet, Korça and Këlcyrë.
Following a DNA analysis performed in Greece, it was revealed that the 108 bodies were not those of Greek soldiers who had fallen in Albania during the 1941 Italo-Greek war, but rather of inhabitants of the village of Kosina. Most of the exhumed bodies belonged to women and children.
