A useless provision that confuses the guilty prosecutor with the messengers

By Mero Baze

Among the proposals for changes to the Code of Criminal Procedure is also the restriction on the press publishing, without the permission of the first-instance court, materials that are not in the file submitted to the court.

In principle, this practice has caused many problems connected with the trial and the prejudging of defendants, since, in most cases, the materials that “leak” from the prosecution aim at holding a popular trial of the defendant before the one in court. And this is an ugly practice, which in Albania has become the norm.

Add to this then the speculation and the thirst for clicks, and many victims are condemned by the press before the court condemns them.

But this is not a problem of journalists, but of the prosecution. The guardians of the investigation file are the prosecutors, not the press. The changes should aim at investigating and punishing the responsible prosecutors who leak materials to the press, and not the journalists.

To wage battle with journalists in the year 2026 over the leaking of information from prosecutors’ files, and to force them to go to court, is a lost battle.

Those materials must not leave the file, and whoever takes them out must be punished. Once they are out, it does not matter whether a newspaper, a television station or a portal publishes them. There are millions of anonymous accounts on social networks that can do you many times more damage than the professional press.

The most recent case, that of the intimate videos of some artists, has been published by almost no serious television station or newspaper, even though there is no law forbidding it. Responsibility and distance from a disgusting thing stopped them. But the damage has happened to those people. Millions of Albanians pass the videos to one another and social networks have turned into a popular court, in the name of a morality they themselves have not known.

Therefore this provision, namely point 14 of Article 103, which speaks of the “Prohibition of the publication of acts and images of criminal proceedings”, would usefully focus on those who take out the secret and not on those who publish it.

Those who take out the secret are prosecutors or officers of the judicial police, who have turned this practice into a new criminal policy towards defendants, especially in cases where they are politicians or well-known people from the world of crime.

I am not saying the provision is dangerous, but, at the very least, it is useless. It cannot protect them by forbidding a few registered newspapers or television stations from publishing them. If they leave the file, they will be published and the damage will be even greater, with the professional media censored.

What must be done is the creation of a practice of investigation and punishment for every prosecutor or BKH officer when his file leaks to the public, apart from the part that goes to court.

This practice of journalists going to obtain permission from Erion Bani or some friend of his to publish the news, when he asks you even for your grandmother’s name to let you into the hall, is ridiculous.

A media outlet does not need permission after 40 days, even if the court gives it. News has value on the day it happens. So the prosecution must be tightened and an example of punishment must be given when such materials leak, since they leak them deliberately and this is a pure criminal offence.

Once they are out, do not then expect nobody to learn of them. Today there are not 10 newspapers and 20 television stations on the market, but three million Albanians with a phone in their hand, who do not care at all about this provision.

Do not produce news dishonestly. That is the only solution. If you produce it, do not seek to stop it, because you will not succeed.