An Albanian court on Monday freed a Greek member of the European Parliament who had just weeks left to serve on his two-year sentence for vote-buying, according to a state broadcaster.
Fredi Beleri, a member of Albania’s Greek minority, made headlines this year after he was elected on the conservative list of Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as an MEP despite being behind bars.
The dual national had been arrested days before municipal elections in Albania in May last year, accused of offering 40,000 leks ($445) in exchange for votes.
He did not take up his post as mayor.
“The court accepted our request to conditionally release Fredi Beleri while he still had about six weeks to serve,” his lawyer Geni Gjyzari said Monday, according to the Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA).
Beleri was temporarily released in mid-July to attend the European Parliament’s inaugural session in Strasbourg, France.
He then returned to Albania to serve out the rest of his sentence, according to the country’s prison administration.
Beleri has called his conviction politically motivated, a claim the Albanian government rejects.
On Monday, he denounced his arrest as a “coup d’etat” and vowed to fight it all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.
“This was a setup and it must be exposed, no matter how long it takes,” he told Greek state broadcaster ERT.
Albania Prime Minister Edi Rama “must learn not to do this to other people,” Beleri said, adding that “rule of law in (the EU) is non-negotiable”.
The Beleri case has caused friction between Athens and Tirana, with the Greek government voicing concerns “regarding the impartiality of the legal proceedings”.
Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis on Monday called the MEP’s release a “positive development”.
But he added: “This does not mean we will forget… the seriousness of what happened.”
Athens had warned that the case could impact Albania’s EU accession efforts, and its foreign ministry said Monday that it would continue to “highlight” minority rights issues related to Albania’s EU aspirations.
But Tirana insists that Beleri has a shady past, including links to nationalist Greek extremists.
Source: AFP
