The one thing that hasn’t changed is the political persecution of Erion Veliaj

By Mero Baze

Today’s Supreme Court decision to keep Erion Veliaj in prison is an act of legalizing a repressive practice installed by several SPAK prosecutors for keeping a person in prison, without courts needing to convincingly argue why prison remains the only solution.

The Constitutional Court ordered the Supreme Court to explain why the prison arrest measure was proportionate and in line with constitutional norms. The decision follows another Constitutional Court decision, which considers Erion Veliaj the irremovable mayor of Tirana until the end of his mandate.

In the meantime, today’s trial had to confront Erion Veliaj’s political situation with his legal situation regarding pre-trial detention, which clashed with the need for him to be at the helm of the Municipality of Tirana, guaranteed precisely by a Constitutional Court decision.

The Supreme Court had not given this answer in its first decision and had upheld the decisions of the two other courts, of first instance and appeal. For this reason, the Constitutional Court ordered a reconsideration, in which the court must necessarily answer the questions it had evaded the first time. Otherwise, the Constitutional Court’s decision becomes null and turns into a ridiculous episode in the hierarchy of the judicial system, since in this case we have only the repetition of the same violation, by the same court, but with a new decision, with another date and new names of judges.

The only thing that has not changed is the political persecution against Erion Veliaj. I call it political, because in this case there is a political mobilization of SPAK, through its tutelage over the court system, to preserve their lynching decision. This makes the entire punishment mechanism against him political. A decision becomes political not only when it is influenced by politicians, by the prime minister, the deputy prime minister or the opposition leader, but also when it is influenced by the personal politics of a group of prosecutors who have created their own Republic. It becomes political precisely because the only thing that doesn’t change is their objective of keeping him in prison at all costs, without justifying the decision.

When the Constitutional Court’s decision touched their salaries, magistrates treated it as binding and accused the government of violating the Constitution by not implementing it. But when the same Constitutional Court demands a real review of Erion Veliaj’s pre-trial detention, they treat the decision as a formality that can be bypassed. So, for them, the authority of the Constitutional Court seems to depend on their interest and not the law. It is sacred when it protects their salaries, but becomes insignificant when it protects the freedom and constitutional rights of a citizen.

The issue neither begins nor ends with Erion Veliaj. It relates to how justice functions when it decides on a citizen’s freedom and how it is influenced in its decision, giving priority to the alliance with its fellow prosecutors or court presidents, framing the decision within a political spirit that they have self-defined as their politics, unsupported by the laws of the state, but by the laws of their Republic.

The Supreme Court gave them a certificate of legality without any argument. This dangerous standard, created by the first-instance court and those after it, by applying a personal politics against a defendant, through keeping him in pre-trial detention at all costs, is a fundamental risk to the constitutional freedoms of every Albanian citizen. I am not speaking of politicians, since for them it will turn into a guillotine, but not necessarily with the same standard as Veliaj’s.

On the other hand, the Supreme Court was called to examine the proportionality of the pre-trial detention measure, as Erion Veliaj is approaching, in a few months, two years in pre-trial detention, and the longer a person stays in pre-trial detention, the greater the court’s burden to justify it. The same causes presented on the day of arrest cannot be used indefinitely, almost two years after the arrest. The court must explain what risk exists today, especially since the investigation has concluded, the file has gone to trial and the evidence has been administered by the prosecution.

If we decide that the “importance” of the charge and of the arrested person replaces the evidence and reasoning for the arrest, then pre-trial detention begins to function as premature punishment against a person who legally continues to be considered innocent and the mayor of Tirana.

Turning the decision into a formality to get rid of the Constitutional Court’s demand, ignoring it in substance, shows that there is a special penal policy against the person and the whole process has been only a predetermined procedural ritual, putting under pressure three Supreme Court judges, who feel more terrorized by SPAK than by the criminals they have tried and convicted. A day before the decision, on portals of the dregs effectively controlled by SPAK prosecutors and especially those of the Veliaj case, writings appeared written by the same hand and distributed by the same press spokesman, that SPAK has under control the trio of judges, since they have “skeletons in the closet,” that is, they are judges with burdens that SPAK knows about.

This is a mechanism of public blackmail, which then seals the entire mechanism that leads us to this political decision-making, turning Justice Reform into an institution of political persecution.

Erion Veliaj is a victim of the persecution of their Republic, which today, besides having its own penal policy, which has nothing to do with our laws, is also trying to have its own budget unapproved by Parliament and the government, as well as its own inquisition institutions, anonymous portals that prosecutors use to realize the desires of its frustrated people.

Erion Veliaj will one day win the battle against this injustice, but until then Albania will head toward the abyss with this justice produced by politics, which now has its own politics. And until then, many of those who rub their hands, or give a hand to his lynching, will fare worse than him and receive less pity than Erion Veliaj receives today.