Mero Baze: I am not against the release of Malltez, but I am against the double standard of GJKKO

2023-11-21 22:32:50Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA MERO BAZE
Mero Baze: I am not against the release of Malltez, but I am against the double
Jamarbër Malltezi / Sali Berisha

The change in the measure of arrest for Jamarbër Malltez would not constitute news, if we were to see that the Appeal of the Special Anticorruption Court respects certain standards equally for everyone.

Keeping an accused in custody, as a criminal policy, in Albania is an excess. Punishment by justice should not specifically mean physical suffering in advance, except in cases where the defendant is in such a position that it hinders the investigation or is caught in the act of a crime.

And in this case, I don't see any drama for Malltezi to be investigated outside of prison, or under house arrest. Even more so if they used humanitarian justifications for sick people in the family.

But the decision raises strong doubts and a lack of standards when compared to other similar decisions to accuse those who have no chance of tampering with evidence or obstructing justice by being investigated at large.

Two cases are very specific, which overturn the Maltezi standard for detention.

The same court has imprisoned Safet Gjici, the former mayor of Kukës, involved in a sexual scandal, which does not need clarification, because it was very transparent. He received the punishment both morally and officially.

If it is to be continued further with a criminal investigation, it can be continued, even though it looks a bit like an Iranian trial. But Safet Gjici has no evidence to destroy if he is judged free. And if he brings that girl forward again, he's hardly in the mood for sex anymore with what happened to him.

How is it possible that the same court rejects Gjic's request because it "risks spoiling the evidence", while legitimizing Malltez's request. I have nothing to do with the release of Malltez, because it is important to focus on the investigation and trial of corruption, and not his suffering in a cell. But the Court's standard is twofold.

Even worse with Vangjush Dako. Dako has been in prison for four months, without ever being questioned, for a permit he gave in 2010, and which he is accused of issuing late, while the builder has started work. Everything happened between 2010-2013. The permit was granted, the building was built, the documents are there and Dako is an unemployed man in Durrës.

Just like Malltezi, who has nothing to do with the documents and contracts he signed, Dako has no place to influence a process that has not yet been asked why he was arrested.

The same court left him in prison, while Malltez was sent home.

So it seems clear that the Special Anticorruption Court of Appeal has a problem with the standard of judgment. And this seems to me a simple accusation before what we all think.

If it is not a matter of the lack of trial standards, then it is a matter of the integrity of the Court, which makes that court corruptible, or blackmailable by the street pressure of Sali Berisha. Then it makes sense to say that Sali Berisha's political blackmail is working and the new justice is kneeling before him.

Now let's choose this want to clarify us. I wish they were weak judges, outside the standard of justice that we require and that they made clientelistic decisions in all cases. I would even be happier if I knew that they took money from Malltezi to release him, that it is something less serious than kneeling in front of Berisha.

The worst will be if Sali Berisha's blackmail on justice really works and they have freed him from fear. This then puts an end to any hope for an independent justice, as there are plenty of people in this country ready to become populists and blackmail justice.

There are and there were.

What we did not have were independent judges who do not consider this pressure. Therefore, it is dangerous to declare Sali Berisha's blackmail as a mechanism that defeats the new justice system.

I am ready to believe more easily that they received some money, than to believe that they were brought to their knees by Berisha's blackmail. I would not guess between these two evils, as if they had a standard for all in their decisions. Even for Beleri, whose prison is costing us with blackmail against Albania. But apparently these judges only have a problem with the blackmails addressed to them by Berisha and not those against Albania.

So obviously they have a different standard for Malltez, and a different standard for others, who do not blackmail them.


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