Fredi Beleri

The vote counting began shortly after midnight at the electoral commission center in Himara‘s football stadium to determine the successor of Fredi Beleris, the elected mayor and current MEP who remains in prison.

Governing Socialist Party candidate Vangjel Tavo was leading in Sunday's repeat mayoral election in Himare, a town in southwestern Albania, with 63 percent of the vote counted from 28 out of 36 polling stations.

An Albanian court on Wednesday postponed the hearing for jailed MEP Fredi Beleri's request for conditional release until September 2.

Beleri's request for release, having served two-thirds of his sentence, has been previously delayed because the prison director failed to provide the court with the ethnic Greek politician's criminal record. 

The hearing of the application of MEP Fredi Beleris for his release on parole was postponed today until 2 September by the competent Albanian court.

Albanian judges postponed the trial for the third time in a row, citing this time the summer holidays of officials in the neighboring country…

A new election for mayor of the predominantly ethnic Greek city of Himare in southern Albania will take place on August 4, without the previously elected mayor, Fredi Beleri, being able to help his chosen successor, Petro Gjikuria.

Albania's Supreme Court on Friday upheld a verdict of the lower courts keeping a former elected mayor from the country's Greek minority in prison after he was convicted of buying votes.

A Supreme Court statement said that it upheld the verdicts of the court of first instance and the court of appeal which had sentenced Fredi Beleri, 51, to two years in prison.

Fredi Beleri, a jailed member of Albania's ethnic Greek minority elected last month to the European Parliament, has been granted leave by the Albanian authorities to attend the legislature to be sworn in.

Fredi Beleris has received permission to travel to Strasbourg and take his oath of office as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) after significant pressure and subsequent concession from Albanian authorities.

The Omonoia organization representing the ethnic Greek minority in southern Albania, and the parties of the Albanian opposition chose as their joint candidate in the repeat municipal elections of August 4 in Himare Petro Gjikuria, an ethnic Greek Albanian who lives and works in the United States.

The government in Tirana did what it had set out to do in the affair with Fredi Beleri, ignoring the reactions from Greece and taking advantage of the fact that the Europeans did not follow Athens' lead, either from indifference or from a failure to understand the gravity of the situation for the member-state.