Sali Berisha is a politician that has historically dominated the political scene in Albania since 1990, when the dictatorial regime was finally overthrown in our country. He was elected President of the Republic of Albania in 1992, following the first pluralist elections in our country granting him a mandate lasting 5-years.
Berisha would be reelected as Head of State during the spring of 1997. His second mandate lasted very few months, because Berisha gave his resignation after the DP’s loss of elections and the beginning of an armed civil conflict taking place shortly after in Albania, triggered by the fall of Ponzi pyramid schemes, where Albanians had been investing their savings for several years, amounting to billions of euros.
Sali Berisha continued his political activity through to 1997-2005 and in 2005 he came to power again as Prime Minister of Albania. He kept this post until 2013, when the Democratic Party finally lost the elections to the current PM Edi Rama, which led to Berisha finally stepping down as Chair of DP.
During his political life, Berisha has often been involved in harsh confrontations with the international community. His first disaccords started back in 1995, when Berisha fired High Court Justice, Zef Brozi and arrested the leaders of the Greek minority group in Tirana. Berisha also refused to meet with the United States Deputy Secretary of State at the time, Timothy Worth.
The conflict escalated even more in May 1996, when the US didn’t concede the general elections, during which violence was used against the opposition and its commissioners were forcefully removed from voting stations.
After these clashes, the Democratic leader was able to calm the troubled waters with Albania’s greatest partner until 2008, when the ex-military ammunition depot in Gerdec, Albania suffered an explosion, which led to the death of dozens and where after investigations and leaked phone taps the names of close family members and cabinet ministers of the Berisha administration were accused to have been allegedly involved.
Once In January 21st 2011, the US appointed the FBI to conduct several scientific verifications regarding the bullets shot against several protesters during the rally demonstrations organized by the Socialist Party, which ended up with the unfortunate death of 4 protestors.
The verdicts of the Albanian High Court at the time, brought forth deep disappointment to the US, which since that moment began to invest human resources and funding to make a deep reform to the Albanian justice system.
With these investments in the Justice reform, the US ambassador at the time, Donald Lu made titanic efforts to convince the sides to enact the necessary constitutional changes, where one of the offices he visited the most during this time, was the former-PM’s Sali Berisha.
However, the Justice Reform only brought about Sali Berisha’s final clash with the High US officials. At the time, he stated that ambassadors are acting like Governors.
Their clash officially ended on May 19th, when the US Department of State announced that because of their involvement in significant corruptive affairs, Sali Berisha and his immediate family members would be denied any future entry to the US territory, thus proclaiming them persona non-grata.
