In February 2025, Albanian prosecutors arrested Erion Veliaj, the three-term mayor of Tirana. Eighteen months later, he is still in jail. He has not been convicted of anything.
His detention has simply been renewed again and again while Albania's courts argue over whether it is lawful. The capital of a NATO ally is being run without the leader its voters chose three times. Americans have a word for this.
We call it lawfare: the use of prosecutors, courts and endless legal process to sideline a political opponent. The practice was never uniquely American. It is now running in country after country, and Albania has produced one of its starkest examples.
What makes the Albanian case stand out is who is doing it. The prosecutors seeking to keep the mayor in detention belong to the Special Structure against Corruption and Organized Crime, known as SPAK, created in 2016 with American and European backing as the centerpiece of a sweeping judicial overhaul. Albania needed that reform.
Corruption ran deep in public life and criminal networks exploited weak institutions. The theory was simple: a stronger justice system would produce cleaner government, greater public confidence, more investment and a faster path to the European Union. Instead, an institution built to protect the rule of law is now the one raising the hardest questions about it.
A decade later, the results are hard to defend. Representative Keith Self of Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, has noted that the judicial backlog has grown from roughly 16,000 cases to an estimated 200,000. Citizens can wait up to 15 years for a final ruling.
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