FILE - Fredis Beleris looks on as Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visits to the ethnic Greek minority of Albania, in Himare, Albania, on Dec. 22, 2022. Beleris told The Associated Press in an interview from prison that he would have preferred to serve as mayor of the southern Albania community he was elected to lead last year, before his arrest and conviction. His case has soured relations between Balkan neighbors Greece and Albania.
Athens described Beleris’ detention and trial as politically motivated and implied Albania’s prospects of joining the EU would suffer. The case is complicated by fractious Balkan politics, minority rights and property disputes on a prime coastal stretch of what’s marketed as the Albanian Riviera, the top tourist destination in the country.
He won with a 19-vote lead, backed by the ethnic Greek minority party and others opposing Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s governing Socialists. But he never took office, being detained until his “But it’s also that the Albanian prime minister doesn’t want the local Greek population to share in that prosperity,” he said. “That’s a direct breach of our human and minority rights.”