Alfred Beleri released from prison on conditional release

Alfred Beleri, the elected mayor of Himarë in the 2023 elections, who was arrested in flagrante and sentenced to two years for vote buying, has been released from prison after serving 15 months for electoral corruption. The court granted him conditional release six months before the end of his sentence.

Why is this significant

Beleri’s arrest and sentencing became a point of contention between the Albanian government and Athens. The Greek government claimed his arrest was politically motivated and demanded his release, even blocking the second EU-Albania intergovernmental conference by using its veto power as an EU member state. However, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama repeatedly stated that the Beleri case was purely a matter of justice, not a government issue.

Context

Alfred Beleri, was arrested 48 hours before the local elections on May 14, 2023 but despite being in pre-trial detention, he narrowly won the election by a margin of 18 votes against the Socialist rival.

While Beleri was in prison and his trial was ongoing, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in an effort to pressure Tirana over its stance on Albania’s EU integration process, nominated Beleri for a seat in the European Parliament. Beleri won a seat on the list of Mitsotakis’s New Democracy party. Although he was sentenced by all levels of the judiciary for electoral corruption to two years in prison, Beleri took the oath as an MEP with a special permit from the Albanian General Prison Directorate to fly to Strasbourg, under the condition that he adhered to the permit’s deadlines.

This marks the first instance of a person serving a prison sentence for a serious offense like vote-buying, which is considered a severe crime in any EU member state, being elected and sworn in as a member of the European Parliament. Ironically, the leaders of this parliament and other EU governing bodies pressured Albanian legislators in 2014 to adopt a decriminalization law that essentially prohibits anyone convicted of serious crimes, including electoral corruption, in the last 15 years from running for any public or political office.

It raises questions about the apparent double standards whereby actions not tolerated in EU candidate countries are easily allowed within the EU itself.