Greek mayor leaves Albania jail to be European Parliament lawmaker

TIRANA (Reuters) -Ethnic Greek politician Fredi Beleri left an Albanian jail on Monday to travel to Strasbourg to take the oath as a European Parliament lawmaker but will return to serve his sentence on vote-buying charges.

Local media showed Beleri, who won a seat in the EU parliament as a candidate for Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' conservative New Democracy Party, leaving jail in a diplomatic car belonging to the Greek embassy.

Beleri was arrested in May 2023 during a mayoral election campaign in his hometown of Himare in Albania, which has an active ethnic Greek community. He subsequently won the vote but was never sworn in while being held in pre-trial detention before being jailed for two years in March this year for election fraud.

"I am going to Athens now and tomorrow I will be in Strasburg to take part in the first meeting of the (European) Parliament," Beleri told media at Tirana airport.

Beleri was later welcomed by a cheering crowd at the airport in Athens.

"My adventure is coming to an end. The fight for democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties continues," he told reporters at the airport before meeting Mitsotakis who said he hoped that Beleri would be freed soon.

Beleri's case has strained relations between Albania and Greece, Balkan neighbours whose ties have often soured over cultural and historical differences, as well as the many Albanian immigrants in Greece and the Greek minority in Albania.

It remains unclear how Beleri will carry out his role as a European Parliament lawmaker during the remainder of his time in prison, to which he has to return on July 20.

Earlier this month he lost an appeal which upheld his conviction on vote-buying from a lower court.

Beleri has accused Albanian Prime Minster Edi Rama of orchestrating a plot against him, an accusation repeatedly denied by Rama who says it is a judicial, not political, matter.

(Reporting by Florion Goga; Additional reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; writing by Fatos Bytyci; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Ros Russell)