Berisha’s “medical” visa is a cruel act of revenge against America

The claim that the State Department has lifted the non grata sanctions on Sali Berisha and his family is not true.

What appears to be true is that Berisha’s lawyers, for $6 million, have found a way to use a clause that allows sanctioned people to enter the United States for UN meetings, official meetings of special importance or special medical visits.

They used the medical route.

Berisha has prepared a large medical file and even produced a diagnosis to make the case that he needs a specialised medical check-up in the United States.

This is not because anyone really believes him. It is a propaganda move, designed to create the impression that he has been allowed back into America.

The US embassy in Tirana declined to comment and referred us to the State Department, which has so far chosen not to comment officially. What will not change is that Berisha and his family remain on the State Department’s sanctions page for undermining democracy and major corruption.

The sanctions have not been lifted.

The only thing that has happened is that Berisha has been allowed to apply for a medical visa to the United States. That suits LaCivita, it suits his lawyers, and it gives Berisha the image he wants: that America has opened the door to him again.

It has not.

You can check the State Department’s website today, tomorrow and every day after that. The sanctions remain.

And this is where the whole propaganda campaign becomes banal.

The truth is that Berisha has spent most of his political career challenging the United States. Since 1995, he has been in political conflict with it. I cannot say that this helped Albania, as the people of the Flamingo Revolution now claim. But Berisha himself never suffered from any inferiority complex toward America.

He is the only Albanian politician who has openly confronted the United States. In 1997, he challenged it publicly and even physically. Later, he ignored it over Gërdec and January 21. He also ignored the non grata designation.

In a sense, Berisha defeated the United States politically, even after it sanctioned him and publicly shamed him as a politician who undermined democracy, was involved in family corruption and blackmailed the justice system.

That is why he could have refused this lawyers’ trick: a $6 million medical visa. It may be the most expensive visa in the world. Politically, he did not need it. He had already challenged the United States and survived.

He is the only Albanian politician who managed to build a small but loyal electorate against America after being declared non grata, just as he did when he confronted Washington in 1997. To this day, it remains the only electorate in Albania that is openly and unapologetically anti-American.

But Berisha accepted the visa because he wants revenge.

He wants to humiliate the United States in return. He wants to show that there is a price that can rescue the corrupt and the butchers of democracy.

And symbolically, he has achieved that.

That is the real damage of this story. All of Berisha’s political defiance of America has now been reduced by Berisha himself to a lie and a $6 million medical visa.

The visa does not remove the sanctions on him or his family. It does not make him cleaner. It does not make him stronger than he was when he was fighting America.

But he thinks it humiliates America.

His message to Albanians is simple: the United States can be bought for $6 million, and a certificate of purity can be obtained that way.

That is his revenge.

But this public act of corruption cannot erase the fact that Berisha remains non grata for Albanians.

He remains the bloodiest and most corrupt politician in Albania’s history. A medical visa does not erase the political killings of January 21. It does not erase the Gërdec massacre, where 26 people were killed by a business linked to his son. It does not erase the electoral crimes, the violence against journalists or the transformation of Albania into the private estate of his daughter and son.

His problem now is with Albanians.

They have not yet recovered the money he took from them.