Veliaj’s "dismissal" a formality of pre-trial detention and political lynching

Today’s Tirana City Council vote held no surprises. Socialist councillors backed Prime Minister Edi Rama’s move to dismiss Mayor Erion Veliaj, clearing the way for fresh elections amid a declared management emergency in the capital.

Debating whether councillors stayed “loyal” to Veliaj makes little sense. This was not a headcount of Rama versus Veliaj. It was a routine step to carry out the government’s political decision to replace the mayor. And because it overlapped with the Democratic Party’s request from three months ago, there was no room for a fight or for moral posturing.

The truth is that there are two different battles. Rama needs a new mayor for Tirana. Veliaj must fight in court—both to prove his innocence and to prove the political lynching he has faced.

Today advanced both sides. For Rama, the path to remove the mayor is open. For Veliaj, the vote strengthens his claim that politics is overriding the presumption of innocence. His battle will likely go to Strasbourg. Rama, meanwhile, hopes appeals do not drag into 2027, leaving the capital without an elected mayor.

So today the drama is not as great as it seems, especially in Veliaj’s relations with the Socialist Party. That drama already played out earlier—in the hidden influence Socialist figures had in fabricating evidence against him, and above all in the process of his physical lynching inside prison—carried out by former justice minister Ulsi Manja, through the Prison Directorate and special forces, creating a standard of persecution that breaks every record in the treatment of a politician in jail.

Veliaj may be the most restricted political detainee in the country—kept under a harsh, demeaning isolation regime and targeted by orchestrated campaigns from SPAK prosecutors, the Justice Ministry, and gutter media bankrolled by Socialist ministers.

That is Veliaj’s real conflict with the Socialist Party and with the justice system—not today’s tally. The vote was routine, born of a party that tolerated his political lynching while scapegoating only Manja—a minister whose high-school education would embarrass any government.

Look at the cost Albania is paying today with the European Union because of the ignorance shown in drafting the new Criminal Code, and you can see where the Albanian Ministry of Justice had ended up. Look at Manja’s farewell ceremony, where the wives of opposition politicians shed more tears than they ever did for Meta or Sali Berisha.

With his political and administrative elimination now formal—and the investigation closed and sent to court—Veliaj is powerless: no office to wield, no evidence he can tamper with, no leverage over prosecutors, no threat even to Manja.

That puts the Supreme Court to the test. In early October it must rule on Veliaj’s detention. If—despite his removal, despite the closed investigations, despite the case moving to trial—judges still keep him in pre-trial lock-up, serious questions about unlawful pressure will follow.

Every stated reason for holding him has fallen away. What remains is political hatred. That is not in the Penal Code. It belonged to the old communist one.