Albanian journalist Artur Llanaj has accused the Appellation Prosecutor of Durrës, Ferdinand Elezi, of kidnapping him over an article published in a newspaper. Elezi is the most advantaged among seven candidatures to be elected as interior General Prosecutor, following the expiry of Adriatik Llalla’s mandate earlier this month.

Llanaj remembers his only meeting with the prosecutor Elezi, after an article in the newspaper Tema about the then-General Prosecutor Dhori Sollaku. The journalist said three persons took him inside their tinted-windows car, where he was punched, and took him in a bar where he was faced with Ferdinand Elezi.

“He (Elezi) called Sollaku and told him he had the “order” on the table (the order was I) and would clear the air. I could not hear what Sollaku said, but I listened to this (Elezi) saing he would do his best”, Llanaj writes, adding Elezi asked him to deny the article he had published at Tema.

“We didn’t stay long at the bar and left to go to his office. I did not know whether I was a hostage of those who took me there or I was in the hands of State, the prosecutor’s, to protect me from them. While going there, I heard the friendly-like threat he could issue an arrest warrant and we should talk in his office. There he asked me to deny the article, by I told him I couldn’t even if I wanted, he should have talked with the publisher, Mero Baze. He allowed me to call Baze and by his tone understood the answer to his request. While letting me go, he said ‘we of the Right are screwing one another’”.