Today, one of the members of the Supreme Court's panel of judges, Ilir Panda, resigned from the trial of the case with petitioner Erion Veliaj, which is related to the recourse against the security measure imposed by SPAK for the mayor of Tirana. The resignation comes in a process that has been at the center of public attention for days, due to the debate over the composition of the panel and the expectations created about Veliaj's fate. The case was returned to the Supreme Court after the Constitutional Court, with a much-discussed decision, in a 5-3 vote, decided to overturn the previous decision of the Supreme Court and force it to reconsider the case.
The intense debates within the Constitutional Court and the high expectations raised before that case, that Erion Veliaj would be released from prison, are already known. That did not happen. But the fact remains that the debates within the Constitutional Court have been sharp. The decision of that court itself, in addition to the 5:3 ratio, also contained several parallel opinions, where the one of Judge Sonila Bejtja, part of the majority of five members, stood out, with the extreme position that not only the decision of the High Court should be overturned, but also the decisions of the Appeals Chamber of the Constitutional Court and the first instance of the Constitutional Court, so that Veliaj could be released from prison.
This entire atmosphere of debate and media spin preceded the phase of sending the case from the Constitutional Court to the Supreme Court.
After the much-discussed decision of the Supreme Court to unify the parameters for determining the measure of arrest in prison; after the fierce debate in the Constitutional Court; after the artificial postponements of the sessions in the GJKKO; after the strange request of Ajola Xoxa to suspend the trial on the grounds that she is already the mother of a newborn baby; and after many other procedural pirouettes, the public environment was saturated with the conviction that, now that the Constitutional Court had passed the ball to the Supreme Court, the latter would very soon get Erion Veliaj out of prison.
The case was registered with the Supreme Court on July 8, 2026 (after the GJK forwarded it). The case was quickly drawn and Judge Sandër Simoni was appointed rapporteur. The members of the panel are Genti Shala (former member of the CEC appointed by the left-wing political spectrum) and Ilir Panda (former Minister of Justice during the SP government).
Speculations may be numerous, but they do not seem unfounded. Today, it was announced that Ilir Panda has resigned from the case in question. The latter had also resigned in a similar case, when the applicant was Erion Veliaj's wife, Ajola Xoxa. More than a year ago, when Ajola Xoxa complained to the High Court about the inspections carried out in the premises in her use, Ilir Panda, then part of the trial panel, resigned. An ethical act, it must be said. But the same standard should have been followed in cases where Erion Veliaj is the applicant: the acquaintance or friendship relationship with his wife Xoxa also affects the position of Veliaj's husband and the obstacle that Ilir Panda had in Xoxa's case is identical to that in Veliaj's case.
Although today's resignation remains, in essence, an ethical act by Ilir Panda, a shadow of doubt continues to remain. The case was filed with the Supreme Court on July 8, 2026, while Mr. Panda was acquainted with the case and the name of its petitioner that same day. The ethical standard requires a judge to request resignation from a case from the moment he becomes aware of the conflict of interest he has with the petitioner. A full week has passed since July 8, for Mr. Panda to finally conclude that, just as in the case of the woman, where there was an obstacle to judging her, the same obstacle existed in the case of the man.
It is unlikely that a judge would need seven days to think about such an elementary matter. Therefore, it remains to be thought that it was precisely the publicizing of this fact, the existence of the obstacle to being a member of the judicial body, by the media, that forced Mr. Panda not to continue a dangerous trajectory for him, but also for the public credibility of the Supreme Court: that is, to continue to judge the case of the imprisonment of a personal friend of his.
Ilir Panda's resignation may have avoided a conflict of interest in this process, but it does not alleviate the questions as to why this ethical standard was not applied from the moment the case was assigned to the jury. For a court of the highest level, impartiality must not only exist, but also be visible. Precisely for this reason, public and media monitoring of this issue remains more necessary than ever.
