By Andi Bushati
The Special Court of First Instance decided this Wednesday to take Ilir Meta's file to the substantive process, making it unnecessary to keep him in solitary confinement.
But, although release from prison is unlikely to happen for a long time, the case of the man who has exercised, at various times, the functions of number 1, 2 and 3 of the state, is a flagrant example that echoes Edi Rama's current propaganda against detention without trial and in defense of the sacred principle of the presumption of innocence.
Since being caught red-handed in the abuse of 1.1 billion euros in public competitions, the prime minister has launched a campaign to defend his former deputy Belinda Balluku, against a repressive justice system that cracks down on cells without final decisions, and which does not respect the convicted, as people who are still innocent.
With this fortune raised in glass, Rama also justified the defense of the one accused of having signed 50 million euros on the Llogara tunnel, while simultaneously abusing all the tenders of the capital's ring road. The use of these alibis served as the background for the failure to surrender immunity by parliament, which would pave the way for her arrest.
But, if you look at what happened for 17 months in Ilir Meta's cell, all of Rama's pleas in the name of human rights, and especially those of previously convicted criminals, look like a stale joke.
Today, the man who helped bring the Renaissance to power is the most persecuted prisoner in Albania. He is subjected to violence worthy of dictatorships of another time, depriving him of even the basic elements of daily life.
This, even at the cost of violating a number of rights guaranteed by the constitution of this country, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the European Prison Rules.
In addition to being deprived of the right to go out for air, to talk on the phone, or to perform physical activity, the leader of the second largest opposition party has been unlawfully prohibited from contacting the number two of his political force, meeting with MPs or MEPs, when such a thing is guaranteed without asking for permission, giving interviews or communicating with the public, according to the practices consolidated by the European Court of Human Rights. Some of these violations, in a document drafted by the Ombudsman, are considered as “unjustified restrictions in law”.
So, to have a clearer idea of what is happening in the cells of 313, what is being done to Ilir Meta in the dark is completely similar to the violence, brutality and primitivism that we all saw, in the light of day, during his arrest. Those sequences, which made Rama's friend, former Italian Prime Minister Renzi, ironize the respect for human rights in Albania, are being repeated with the same frequency in the dungeons of Jordan Misje.
It is not for nothing that Ilir Meta labeled the prime minister in court as the "de facto guardian of his prison". Because if for the investigation, detention or now bringing him to court, it can be discussed whether SPAK acted politically or not, if doubts can be raised about the independence of our new justice, the prison system, their directorate, are directly dependent on the government. Their employees are soldiers of the prime minister and act, in "violation of the law", according to the orders they receive from above.
Therefore, if Edi Rama were truly even slightly concerned about standards such as the presumption of innocence, or the dignified treatment of those who have not yet had a final guilty verdict, he would not demand it loudly to protect his thieves, but would silently implement it for what directly depends on him.
And he has decided: an opponent like Ilir Meta must be persecuted with the methods of another time, while he shamelessly uses the denunciation of the mentality of this time to protect those who have signed in his place, as he recently did with Balluk.
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