Athens and Tirana

The continued, illegal, pretrial detention by the Albanian authorities of Fredi Beleri, the mayor-elect of the predominantly ethnic Greek town of Himare, is not just a blatant violation of his rights, it is also a serious matter of prestige for Greece. 

The Greek state has an obligation to exhaust all the leverage it has over the neighboring country to ensure the elected official’s release. And Albania must, even now, prove that it deserves the position it is hoping to secure in the European Union family.