Albanian authorities remove Greek-born mayor from office over alleged vote-buying – Winnipeg Free Press

Lina Portman3 days ago

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TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Albanian election officials on Friday removed an ethnic Greek mayor from office after he was jailed for vote-buying in last year's municipal elections.

A new election will take place on August 4.

Dhionisios Alfred Beleri, 51, was elected mayor of the Albanian town of Himare – a town on the Albanian Riviera 240 kilometres south of the capital, Tirana, where a Greek minority lives – in May 2023. He had been arrested two days earlier after allegedly offering 40,000 Albanian leks (360 euros; 390 dollars) to buy eight votes.

FILE – Fredis Beleris attends Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' visit to Albania's ethnic Greek minority in Himare, Albania, Dec. 22, 2022. Fredis Beleris, a Greek-born politician jailed in Albania for vote-buying, says he hopes his election this month to the European Parliament will help strengthen the rule of law in Albania. Beleris told The Associated Press in an interview from prison that he would have preferred to be mayor of the southern Albanian community he was elected to represent last year before his arrest and conviction. His case has soured relations between Balkan neighbors Greece and Albania. (Dimitris Papamitsos/Greek Prime Minister's Office via AP, File)

Last month, an Albanian appeals court upheld Beleri's two-year prison sentence, a decision that has inflamed tensions with neighboring Greece.

Beleri belongs to the Greek ethnic minority Human Rights Union Party, but in last year's municipal elections he was the candidate of a coalition that also included the center-left Freedom Party of former president Ilir Meta and a splinter group from the opposition center-right Democratic Party of former prime minister and president Sali Berisha.

Beleri has denied the accusations and Athens has described his detention as politically motivated.

Beleri, who has dual citizenship, also won a Greek seat in the European Parliament representing the ruling conservative New Democracy party in European elections earlier this month.