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The election of Fredi Beleri MEP has caused a sensation in the foreign media. For many of them, it is surprising that a person who is in a cell was chosen. The French News Agency (AFP) has echoed his choice, listing the accusations and exploits over the years. The news was also reflected in the American magazine Barrons. Likewise, many other media have highlighted the fact that Beleri was once caught with a gun and was punished by the Greeks, while now he is in a cell for buying votes.
An elected Albanian mayor jailed for vote-buying has won a seat in the European Parliament with Greece's ruling conservative party.
Fredi Beleri, an ethnic Greek Albanian citizen, was sentenced in March to two years in prison for vote-buying before his election as mayor of the Albanian town of Himara.
The Greek government has repeatedly raised concerns about his case, and Beleri was included in Greece's ruling party's list for this weekend's EU elections.
On Sunday, he received over 238,000 votes and will be one of Greece's 21 MEPs, seven of whom were elected on the list of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' conservative New Democracy party.
Albania's ethnic Greek minority, which lives mainly in the south, has been a frequent source of tension between Athens and Tirana, with Greece often claiming that Albania violates its rights, a charge rejected by Tirana.
In the cell during the last 13 months, the 52-year-old Beleri has repeatedly said that his arrest was politically motivated. "My crime is that we in Himare want to be masters of our ancestral land. My crime is that my compatriots elected me mayor against the plans of the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama", he said at the time of sentencing. Rama dismissed the accusations as "delusional".
The Beleri case has caused friction between Athens and Tirana, where the Greek government expresses concern "about the impartiality of legal processes".
In a statement in March, the Greek foreign ministry called his two-year sentence "clearly disproportionate to the scale of the alleged offence". Last May, Athens also warned that the case could affect Albania's EU accession bid. Tirana insists that Beleri has a dark past, including ties to extremists.
In 1995, he was arrested at the Albanian-Greek border along with six other men, with an arsenal of weapons in the car.
In 1997, Beleri was sentenced by a Greek court to probation for weapons possession, a sentence which was later overturned on appeal. / Adapted "Pamphlet" from "AFP"
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