Former MP and former minister Ilir Beqaj, currently in the Durrës Penitentiary, has addressed an official letter to the heads of parliamentary committees, Fatmir Xhafaj and Ulsi Manja, as well as the Minister of Justice, Toni Gogu. Through this letter, Beqaj raises the alarm about what he considers a "serious distortion" of the criminal process in Albania, targeting article 332/d, point 3 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
"The charge is not the prosecutor's conviction, but the court's dictate"
At the center of Beqaj's complaint is the change in the charge during the preliminary hearing for file "13/2020". According to him, the court has exceeded its powers by becoming the "formulator" of the charge, a role that the Constitution exclusively recognizes for the Prosecution.
"If the accusation essentially stems from the court's reasoning, while the prosecutor says that this is not his conviction, then we have a serious distortion of the criminal process. This is no longer simply a terminological or technical problem. This is a problem of the authorship of the accusation," Beqaj states in his letter.
He details that while SPAK had investigated him for "abuse of office" , the judge of the preliminary hearing dictated the new qualification: "theft by abuse of office". Beqaj emphasizes that the prosecutors themselves admitted in the courtroom that they made this change only to avoid a procedural deadlock, and not because they were convinced of the new offense.
Violation of the ECHR and the Constitution
Beqaj argues that this practice violates Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as the defendant is not officially notified by the prosecutor of the exact nature of the accusation.
"The new charge was not notified to me with a new act from the prosecutor... it was sometimes referred to as the decision of the judge of the previous session, sometimes as the minutes, and even as an audio recording of the session."
According to the former minister, this situation creates a dangerous ambiguity between the one who accuses and the one who judges:
"If this logic is accepted, then the boundary between the court that judges and the prosecution that accuses becomes unclear... The court dictates the real content of the accusation and the prosecutor gives up his conviction only for procedural effect."
Call for legal initiative and constitutional control
In closing the letter, Ilir Beqaj asks senior representatives of the majority and the Ministry of Justice to intervene to review this point of the Criminal Procedure Code, describing this as a need that goes beyond his personal case.
"I invite you to take concrete steps to initiate a legal initiative to rewrite Article 332/d of the Criminal Procedure Code or to request constitutional review by the Constitutional Court. The constitutional review of this norm is not a personal interest. It is necessary to protect the separation of roles in the criminal process."
So far, there has been no official reaction from the Special Anti-Corruption Commission or the Ministry of Justice regarding this request filed on April 20, 2026.
