OPEN LETTER/ Come to the dialogue and listen to me speak, otherwise I will cut off your scholarships, you will rot in prison. Please!

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Voxpress:

2026-10-22 14:17:51Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA YLLI MANJANI
Star Manjani

Today it was announced that the GJKKO has decided to continue the trial of Ilir Meta and other defendants without the presence of defense lawyers.

Let's be clear here. If Ilir Meta, Monika Kryemadhi or anyone else in that process does not want to have a lawyer, that is their choice, as long as the law allows self-defense. I wish them nothing but success in court!

The right to have a lawyer belongs to the defendant, not the lawyer. It is he who decides whether he wants to defend himself or seek the assistance of a lawyer, except in cases where the law makes defense mandatory.

But if Ilir Meta, Monika Kryemadhi or other defendants expressly request to be defended by their lawyers and the court decides to continue the trial without legal protection, then we have a problem that goes far beyond any debate about an administrative regulation.

We have a fundamental constitutional problem! From Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to Articles 31 and 42 of the Constitution, to the most detailed provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure, no norm gives the court unlimited power to deprive the defendant of the protection he seeks.

Such a decision, if not based on the conditions and guarantees provided by law, would be incompatible with the standards of democratic judgment.

It would be a standard reminiscent of the justice of Enver Hoxha's state, where the will of the power that judged had priority over the rights of the one being judged. Even the courts of the Revolutionary Guard of Iran do not declare as a general rule the necessity of a lawyer. Even where the rights of defense are severely limited, the formal existence of the lawyer has not disappeared from the process. Of course, this does not mean that a fair trial is guaranteed there.

But our absurdity is that we are discussing the restriction of a fundamental right in a state that claims to judge according to European standards.

And for what?!

Because of an administrative regulation!

Because of a conflict between lawyers and the administrative director of a single corridor of our judicial system!

A regulation that purports to define the manner in which lawyers enter, remain, and practice their profession on court premises has become the cause of a clash that now threatens the very guarantees of the criminal process.

Undoubtedly, the rules of a court can organize its administration, but they cannot replace the Code of Criminal Procedure. They cannot dictate the rules of trial. They cannot arbitrarily limit the exercise of the defense, much less impose themselves on the Constitution.

We lawyers cannot make any concessions to such administrative absurdity. Because, if we accept today that a court president can determine at will the conditions under which a lawyer practices his profession, tomorrow he can decide that the lawyer can stand in the courtroom with one leg!

It's not like I would be surprised if they had thought of this too! The behavior of the corridor leader shows this, as he seeks to impose the rules that have been put in place to guarantee due process in order to make an administrative regulation of his own choosing a reality.

The issue is not how much the director wants the lawyer in court, but the limit of administrative power in the face of a constitutional right.

Of course, the court has the obligation to conduct the processes and not allow them to be blocked indefinitely. But it must fulfill this obligation with the means provided by law, guaranteeing effective protection, not by treating the absence of a lawyer as a waiver of the client's right.

We lawyers may disagree with that corridor director. We may challenge his regulation, we may protest it, and we may demand its repeal.

But this is a relationship between advocacy and court administration.

The defendant is not a party to this conflict! He did not draft the regulation. He did not set the restrictions. He did not cause the institutional clash. And, above all, he does not have to pay the price of this conflict with his right to defense.

A court cannot use an administrative dispute to justify violating a constitutional guarantee.

Ultimately, a court is free to decide according to the law on the guilt or innocence of Ilir Meta, Monika Kryemadhi, and anyone else. But it is not free to invent a new standard of criminal procedure, according to which a defendant who seeks a lawyer can be tried without effective defense, simply because the court director is in conflict with his lawyer.

The right to defense is not the property of the court. It is the right of the defendant.

And an administrative regulation, no matter how authoritarian the spirit in which it is written, cannot have more power than the Constitution and the European Convention.

The court may conduct a trial without a lawyer when the defendant himself agrees to it and this is permitted by law, provided that the necessary guarantees are respected. However, it cannot turn the conflict with the lawyers into a decision to deprive the defendants of their right to defense.

Justice without guarantees of protection is not justice. It is simply the exercise of power in its name.


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

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