TIRANA, Oct. 23 – Wednesday’s parliamentary session will decide whether former Socialist Party Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri will be arrested or not as prosecutors continue to investigate into the current ruling SP MP over his alleged involvement with a drug cultivation and trafficking ring.
Ruling majority and opposition MPs at the parliamentary Council on Regulation, Mandates and Immunity approved two separate reports on Tahiri’s case last weekend with five Socialist lawmakers opposing his arrest but giving the okay for other authorizations such as banning him to travel abroad or inspecting his house.
Meanwhile, four opposition Democratic Party MPs and one Socialist Movement for Integration MP fully supported the Serious Crimes Prosecutor’s Office request seeking the Parliament’s authorization for Tahiri’s arrest and his house inspection.
The prosecutors’ request comes few days after Moisi Habilaj, a distant cousin of former minister Tahiri, was arrested among several other suspects, by Italian authorities. Tahiri, one of the longest serving interior ministers who was in office from September 2013 to March 2017, faced calls for his arrest after his name came up in wiretaps in the case, published by Italians police.
He has denied any wrongdoing, saying the request for his arrest is politically motivated.
The 37-year-old MP, one of the key figures of the Socialist Party in its previous four-year-term, has been temporarily suspended from the Socialist Party parliamentary group as investigations continue, Prime Minister Edi Rama announced on Monday.
The ruling Socialist Party holds a comfortable majority of 74 MPs in its second consecutive mandate and is expected to turn down the prosecutors’ request for Tahiri’s arrest on Wednesday’s parliamentary session.
