Jailed Albania mayor-elect wins Greek MEP post
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An Albanian mayor-elect jailed for vote-buying has won a European Parliament seat with Greece's ruling conservative party, results showed on Monday.
Fredi Beleri, an ethnic Greek Albanian citizen, was in March sentenced to two years in prison for buying votes ahead of his election as mayor of the Albanian town Himara in May 2023.
The Greek government has several times raised concerns over his case with Tirana, and Beleri was included on the list of Greece's ruling party for the EU polls this weekend.
On Sunday, he picked up over 238,000 votes and will be one of Greece's 21 MEPs, seven of whom were elected on the ticket of the conservative New Democracy party of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Albania's ethnic Greek minority, which lives primarily 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.
Held for the past 13 months, the 52-year-old Beleri has repeatedly said that his arrest was politically motivated.
"My crime is that we in Himara want to be masters of our ancestral land. My crime is that my countrymen elected me mayor against the plans of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama," he said at the time of his sentencing.
Rama has dismissed the accusations as "delusional".
The Beleri case has caused friction between Athens and Tirana, with the Greek government expressing concern "regarding the impartiality of the legal proceedings".
In a statement in March, the Greek foreign ministry called his two-year sentence "obviously disproportionate to the extent of the alleged offence".
Last May, Athens also warned that the case could impact Albania's EU accession efforts.
Tirana insists Beleri has a shady past, including links to extremists.
In 1995, he was arrested on Greece's border with Albania along with another six men, with guns found in their possession.
Beleri in 1997 was handed a suspended sentence for gun possession by a Greek court, which was later reduced on appeal.