Fredi Beleri, candidate for Mayor of the Municipality of Himara,and two more people were arrested by Albanian special forces Thursday midnight.
The arrest was on charges for alleged “buying of votes.”
Prompt was the reaction of the Greek Foreign Ministry that delivered a demarche to Albania’s Foreign Ministry and a telephone contact of FM Nikos Dendias with PM Edi Rama.
The organizations of the Greek minority in Albania, OMONIA and KEAD, reacted strongly to the unprecedented, as they characterize it, attack against the Hellenism of Albania.
Fredy Beleri, president of the local branch of OMONIA, is running in the municipal elections of Himarra, as a mayoral candidate supported by both the Human Rights Union Party (KEAD) and OMONIA, as well as by the opposition coalition led by the Democratic Party of Sali Berisha and the Freedom Party of the former president of the Republic Ilir Meta.
On the way to the ballot box, Fredy Beleri was reportedly harshly attacked by a section of the Albanian press and also by Prime Minister Edi Rama himself.
Just a few hours before Beleri’s arrest Rama allegedly declared to a television station that the day after the elections he would “account personally” with Beleri.
Despite the initial information that Beleri was temporarily released on Friday morning, he is ultimately still detained at the Vlore police station, where he had been transferred, Greek state-run news agency amna reports early afternoon.
Beleri was not taken to the police station of Himare, but to that of Vlore, which is several kilometers away. So far, no criminal charges have reportedly been set forth.
