Thursday 05:22
The Examiner
An open letter to the embassies of Albania’s NATO and EU partners, and to their intelligence and security services by Albatros Rexhaj (Tirana) Excellencies, colleagues, You built SPAK. Your governments funded it and trained its prosecutors. You are its sponsors, which is why I am writing to you and not to the Albanian government. …
The Examiner
Renada Bici (Legal Desk) On Tuesday a court prohibited publication of the Agasi decision under Article 103. On Wednesday the prosecution’s case against Vlora Hyseni, from the same investigation, was in the press. On 22 September the Special Appeal Court upheld the detention of Ergys Agasi in the AKSHI investigation. Judge Florjan Kalaja’s disposition …
The Examiner
Editorial Board On 26 May the European Union told Albania it had met the interim benchmarks for the fundamentals cluster and could start closing chapters. Three closed in July. The same day it set the closing benchmarks for the rule-of-law chapters. For corruption, the common position of 22 May asks Albania to demonstrate “a …
The Examiner
Albania’s prosecutor has just suspended the country’s intelligence chief and the government let it happen. That is what Brussels asked for, and Tirana is graded as if it hadn’t happened. It is also the moment to start checking the prosecutor. By Albatros Rexhaj (Tirana) On Tuesday morning a prosecutor in Tirana asked a court …
The Examiner
Mero Baze Until now, the entire debate over the failure of the Justice Reform has focused on its institutional architecture: SPAK’s blackmailing hold over the courts, a bad judicial map that has multiplied the backlog of cases and the suffering of people trying to obtain justice, and the absence of an effective oversight institution …
The Examiner
Three Americans spoke for Washington in the Balkans this week. Only one carried the authority of the United States, and the region barely noticed. by Ardit Rada (Tirana) Washington spent thirty years teaching the Balkans that American policy lived in the American embassy. The region has now learned there are other doors, and it …
The Examiner
The High Court kept Erion Veliaj in custody on Tuesday. The Constitutional Court never said it could not. It said the court had to explain why, and that explanation is now the only document that matters. Renada Bici (Legal Desk) On 15 September the Penal College of the High Court, Sandër Simoni presiding as rapporteur …
The Examiner
The organisation Christopher Hill advises has revived the organ-trafficking allegation by explaining its absence from the indictment through concealment. The investigation it invokes said Albania gave it full cooperation. Tirana is entitled to know which record Hill stands behind. by Ardit Rada (Tirana) Christopher Hill was the American chargé d’affaires when the United States …
The Examiner
When the judiciary sets its own pay, enforces it through its own courts and looks to Brussels for cover, independence has crossed into power. Renada Bici (Legal Desk) On 11 September the Tirana Administrative Court ordered the Ministry of Finance to process the payrolls of the Special Anti-Corruption Court at a salary reference that …
