Prime Minister Edi Rama has accused the opposition of falsifying an alleged conversation, which seemed to suggest the Interior Minister’s brother had close ties to criminals.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has responded to the week-long attack by the opposition Democratic Party, which has claimed that Interior Minister Fatmir Xhafaj’s brother was involved in drug trafficking, while opposition protesters continued to call for the minister’s resignation.
“It is a montage,” Rama said about the intercepted conversation published by the opposition concerning the minister’s brother.
“We are not facing a compromising act of the Minister of Interior but an imposture … which aims to destabilise the government,” Rama said.
He added that the opposition’s “mud throwing [was] aimed at keeping Europe motivated to not open [membership] negotiations with Albania”.
On May 9, the opposition published an Italian court verdict of 2012, which showed Xhafaj brother, Agron, who goes also by the name Geron, had been sentenced to seven years in prison for drug trafficking in 2002.
Days later, it claimed that Xhafa used his position as head of parliament’s law commission to change the law to protect his brother from extradition to Italy to serve his sentence.
The issue culminated on May 14, when the party published allegedly eavesdropped conversation with Agron Xhafaj, which Democrats’ claim shows the brother of Interior Minister is engaged in drug dealing.
Following this, Agron Xhafaj announced that he had filed charges against DP officials, claiming the eavesdropped conversation was false.
On Wednesday, Albanian media received a letter from him in which he said he had decided to turn himself in voluntarily to the Italian authorities to serve his jail time – but still rejected the opposition’s claims.
“I gave explanations to the prosecutors that the published audio file is false and aims to blackmail me and my brother,” the letter read.
