Kefalogiannis requests Metsola’s intervention over the ‘unjust detention of Beleri’

The chair of the EU-Albania Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee Manolis Kefalogiannis has briefed the European Parliament President Roberta Metsola and the rapporteur of the Report on Albania’s integration path, Isabella Santos, about the meeting he had in a Tirana prison with the newly-elected mayor of Himare, Fredi Beleri. The New Democracy MEP, during their meeting in Brussels, asked Metsola “to launch an initiative to immediately end the unfair and discriminatory treatment of the elected mayor of Himare,” and briefed her about the trip in general and the contacts he had in Albania.

According to an announcement, Kefalogiannis visited Beleri, “a prominent member of the Greek ethnic minority, who remains jailed on remand in [what is a] violation of all concepts of the Rule of Law and constitutes a grossly unfair and discriminatory treatment of an elected mayor.” The continued pre-trial detention, the announcement adds, “raises strong concern and reasonable questions as to the existence of political expediency on the part of the Albanian authorities,” a decision “that prevents the assumption of duties of Fredi Beleri as Mayor of Himare and is in complete contradiction with the decision of the citizens who elected him to the office of mayor of their city.”

During his visit to Tirana, Kefalogiannis also met with officials of the Albanian government and the Albanian co-chairman of the Commission, Taulant Balla, to whom he raised “the issue of the unjust and ongoing detention of Fredi Beleri.”