A 55-year-old man in Durres set himself on fire on Friday in front of the courthouse, apparently in protest over delays in a property dispute.
Asim Shemsi was reportedly upset over continued delays in a case in the District Court in Durres, and on Friday morning poured gasoline over himself and set it on fire.

A police patrol close to the scene intervened and extinguished the flames. The man is now recovering in Tirana’s Mother Teresa University Hospital, suffering third-degree burns to his face and neck.

This not the first time that self-immolation has been used as a form of protest in Albania.

Last year, two former Communist-era former political prisoners set themselves on fire in Tirana in a hunger strike, protesting over the slow payment of reparations to victims of the Communist regime.

One of the former prisoners, Lirak Bejko, later died in the Italian hospital to which he had been transferred for specialized treatment.

Albania’s justice system is widely perceived as corrupt, and surveys show that even judges themselves admit the extent of the problem.

According to a survey, published by the Center for Transparency and Freedom of Information in October 2012, which polled 58 per cent of Albania’s judicial contingent, only 18 per cent of respondents said the justice system was not corrupt, 25 per cent believed it was, and another 85 per cent admitted it was seen as corrupt

Only 33 per cent of judges said they believed the judicial system was free from political interference, 50 per cent believed it was partly free while 7 per cent responded that it was not free. Ten per cent of respondents declined to answer the question.