Greek minority politician released on probation in Albania

Fredi Beleri, an elected ethnic Greek mayor of an Albanian seaside town whose imprisonment on vote-buying charges strained the ties between the two neighbouring countries, has been released on probation, his office said Monday.

A court in Fier, 100 kilometres south of the capital, Tirana, where Beleri, 51, was serving a two-year sentence, accepted his request to be released on probation.

Beleri had another six weeks in his prison term before his release, lawyer Eugen Gjyzari said.

According to the Democratic Union of the Greek Minority in Albania, known as Omonoia, a rally to celebrate Beleri’s freedom has been planned in his town of Himarë.

Last May, Beleri was arrested two days before last year’s municipal elections in the country. He was later charged and convicted of offering about 40,000 Albanian leks (€360) to buy eight votes.

The case against him has strained relations between Tirana and Athens, with Greece threatening to hold up Albania’s bid to join the European Union. Beleri and Athens claim his conviction was politically motivated.

Albanian officials strongly rejected those claims, citing the independence of the judiciary.

From Albanian prison to European Parliament

In June, Beleri, a dual Albanian-Greek national, was elected to the European Parliament with Greece’s governing centre-right party, New Democracy, and was given a five-day leave from prison to attend the parliament’s opening session in Strasbourg a month later.

Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis called Beleri’s release “certainly a positive development”.

“This doesn’t mean we’ll forget the (previous) 17 months and the severity of what happened,” he told a press briefing.

“Because in the person of Fredis Beleris, the Greek government sees all the Greek citizens, all the Greek ethnic minority in Albania, which we will continue to support.”

After Beleri was stripped of his title and convicted and imprisoned, an early election was held in Himara for the post of mayor, which the governing Socialist Party candidate won.

In the aftermath of the fall of Albania’s communist regime in the early 1990s, property that the state had previously seized was distributed among residents.

However, this often led to disputes over ownership claims, and there have been allegations of ethnic bias in land distribution.

Beleri claimed the case against him was an attempt by the Socialist Party’s Prime Minister Edi Rama to retain control of Himarë and its potential for lucrative future property development as the tourism sector booms.