Blood feud forces teen to hide in home

TIRANA, Albania, July 11 (UPI) -- An Albanian teen said his life is "worse than a prison sentence" because he is confined to his home to avoid being killed in a blood feud involving his family.

Christian Luli, 17, has been confined to his family's small home in northern Albania for 10 years because he is afraid he will be killed if he goes outside, the International Herald Tribune reported.

"I have known nothing else since I was a boy. I dream of freedom and of going to school. If I was not so afraid, I would walk out the door. Living like this is worse than a prison sentence," he told reporters.

Luli's only mistake was being fathered by a man who killed someone after a drunken dispute in his poverty stricken village, the report said.

Lili and 17 of his male relatives live in fear because of a code in the Kanun, a set of historic Albanian laws, which states "blood must be paid with blood."

The National Reconciliation Committee, a nonprofit group that opposes blood feuds, said about 20,000 people have been caught up in blood feuds since the 1991 fall of Communism in Albania.