Albanian opposition leader Sali Berisha has been released from house arrest, while the country’s former president and prime minister awaits trial on corruption charges as protests against his detention escalate.

“The court has decided to revoke the house arrest measure for the defendant Sali Berisha,” Elsa Lita, a spokeswoman for the Special Court for Corruption and Organized Crime, told Reuters.

The 80-year-old Berisha was put in house arrest in December 2023 for refusing to appear in court in a corruption investigation. Prosecutors in September charged him with using his influence during his first term as prime minister between 2005-2009 to favor his son-in-law for a lucrative construction contract to privatize a state-owned sports complex.

His house arrest triggered regular anti-government demonstrationsincluding on Tuesday, when police used tear gas and pressurized water to break up a rally of hundreds of opposition supporters who had blocked roads in Tirana, accusing the government of corruption and calling for its replacement by a technocrat transitional government.

Berisha, who is the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, denies the charges and says they are part of a political vendetta against him by the ruling party and accuses current government leader Edi Rama of being the source of these prosecutions.

Protesters say they are engaging in a campaign of social disobedience against Rama. The opposition in Albania organizes demonstrations almost every week demanding the formation of a caretaker government until the parliamentary elections in 2025.

The leaders of the two largest opposition parties, Sali Berisha of the Democratic Party and Ilir Meta of the Freedom Party, are accused of corruption. Both deny the charges and say Rama orchestrated the prosecutions against them.

The prime minister, for his part, assures that the prosecutions are not politically motivated and accuses the opposition of trying to seize power by force.

Free prisoner

The first democratically elected Albanian president since the fall of communism in the 1990s, Berisha then led the government from 2005 to 2013. As of 2022, he has been banned from entering the United States and the United Kingdom due to his alleged involvement in corruption cases, charges which he denied.

In addition to house arrest, the court had barred the former head of government from communicating with anyone except “members of his family who live with him”.

However, Sali Berisha did not obey these prohibitions in the slightest: every evening he spoke to a small crowd of supporters who gathered under his building to listen to his anti-government speeches, and he also gave online press conferences every day.