TIRANA, May 12, 2023 – Albanian police have arrested the opposition’s candidate for the mayor of Himara on charges of vote buying, leading to a spat between Greek and Albanian authorities over the ethnic Greek party representative’s detention two days before the Albanian municipal elections.
The arrested candidate, Fredi Beleri, represents a small ethnic minority party allied with Albania’s main opposition coalition in Sunday’s nationwide municipal elections.
Police said he was caught in the process of paying people to vote for him while at a meeting at a seaside restaurant Beleri owns in Himara, an Albanian Riviera tourist town where many residents identify ethnically as Greek although they are seen as Greek-speaking ethnic Albanians by Tirana.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Vlora said Beleri “worked in collaboration with other persons, promising and giving sums of money to various persons in order to buy votes.”
Beleri had come under attack by the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama for several days over allegations he had threatened people resident in Greece who voted for Rama’s ruling Socialist Party incumbent.
-Athens unhappy, sends ambassador to seek answers-
There was a swift reaction from Athens, with the Greek Foreign Ministry instructing Greek Ambassador to Tirana Konstantina Kamitsi, to seek explanations from the Albanian authorities. The ambassador met Friday morning with officials at the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Friday that he had reached out to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen regarding Beleri’s arrest, stating that the charges against him were unsubstantiated.
“Albania needs to understand that Greece and the EU will not accept any compromises on the rule of law and the protection of the rights of the ethnic Greek minority,” Mitsotakis said.
While Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said the arrest was “a scandal if there is no concrete evidence.”
Albanian Foreign Minister Olta Xhacka urged Greek officials to wait for the Albanian justice system to weigh the evidence before jumping to conclusions.
“We respectfully urge our Greek friends in Athens to closely monitor the development of the case with patience, allowing Albanian justice to do its work without external pressures or divisive messages. Good to keep Brussels informed, but we should also wait for the facts to emerge,” Xhacka said in a statement. “Vote-buying is a grave offense in our legislation, and our law enforcement agencies prioritize combating it during election time. This applies to all citizens of the Republic of Albania, including our Greek minority brothers and sisters participating in our elections.”
-Rama: Let justice system do its job-
Albanian Prime Minister Rama took to Twitter to note that Beleri’s arrest by “order of the prosecutor’s office constitutes a great test for justice on the eve of the elections, which means that the violation of the law on his part must be proven and his arrest legally motivated.”
Rama added: “Our battle with that candidate has nothing to do with the investigations or conclusions of the prosecution, therefore respecting the complete independence of the judicial bodies, I call on everyone not to rush to political conclusions to wait patiently for the word and evidence of justice.”
-Opposition condemns arrest-
Albania’s opposition center-right Together We Win coalition decided to field Beleri as a candidate in a nod to its ethnic Greek party ally.
Opposition coalition leaders like Sali Berisha, moved to quickly condemn “the blind hatred behind the arrest.” The other coalition leader, Ilir Meta, called it a “premeditated and staged attack” against the candidate.
The arrest came “after a week of delirious language of hatred, division and stigmatization by Prime Minister Rama against the coalition candidate in Himara,” according Vangjel Dule, the leader of Beleri’s Union for Human Rights Party.
-A history of ‘inciting ethnic hatred’
Beleri is a controversial figure. He has been accused of being part of an armed raid on an Albanian border post in 1994 which killed two soldiers and injured several others. The accusations against him were never proven, and the case, reopened several times by Albanian justice, was archived due to lack of evidence.
In 2003, Beleri was sentenced to three years of imprisonment for the criminal offense of “incitement of ethnic hatred.”
Albanians head to polls on Sunday to elect mayors and councils in 61 municipalities across the country. Three municipalities have official ethnic minority status, two for ethnic Greeks and one for Macedonians. Himara is not one of them.
