“Andrit Shala is innocent, court wrong” Lawyer Berisha reacts sharply after the Special Department's trial

There are judgments you disagree with because of the way evidence is assessed. There are prejudices that, while they may be unfavourable, respect them because they find a legal reasoning based on law and a serious effort to maintain the balance between public interest and individual freedoms. But there are also judgments that stir a deeper concern, not only for the judicial fate of the judge, but for the standard of justice being built up. This is one of them”, Berisha wrote.

According to him, the Dream Shala case does not raise complex actual dilemmas, but presents a clean legal problem.

Berisha has stressed that Article 417 paragraph 6 of the Republic of Kosovo's Criminal Code clearly and depletionally defines the circle of persons considered family members for the purposes of criminal acts of conflict of interest.

The “in that provision does not include the bajanaku, does not include brother-in-law, nor does it include the member of the sex. The lawmaker has knowingly chosen whom he will include and whom he will exclude from this criminal rate. This choice may be popular or not, but it cannot be corrected by court”, he stated.

Lawyer Berisha has recalled that the principle of the criminal crime cremen, the signa morala prohibits expanding criminal responsibility through analogy and that no one can be found guilty of conduct that the law has not explicitly defined as a criminal act.

He also mentioned Opinion No. prot. 01-3393/14 of the Anti-Corruption Agency, under which the husband of the woman's sister, bajanaku, is not named a person close to the official and does not enter the category of persons who may cause criminal interest under the Criminal Code, respectively.

In addition, Berisha has referred to judicial practice in the PKR.nr.16/24 case, stressing that the Constitutional Court in Pec had issued a legal release act in a similar case -- a ruling later confirmed by the Court of Appeals by the PAK.nr.457/24 act. According to him, Appeals had also found that member-genders do not enter the circle of persons designated by Article 417.6 of KPRK and that this provision cannot be met through other laws.

However, according to lawyer Berisha, the most disturbing element of this case remains the fact that the Prosecutor himself had fired investigations into the criminal work of the conflict of interest.

“Paradox is the fact that what did not stand as a conflict of interest in the prosecution's assessment eventually served as the foundation for the statement of guilt by the Special Department. This is not just a procedural counteramention; this affects the very consistency of criminal reasoning”, he wrote.

At the end of his response, Berisha has declared that the case of Andrew Shala exceeds an individual's legal destiny and affects citizens' trust in rule of law.

For this reason, I say today with full professional and moral conviction: Andrew Shala is innocent. The court made a serious mistake. Actuals are mandatory to be respected, but they are not inevitable. The history of law has proved that protection of rule of law begins just where the courage arises to tell the court that it has erred”, concludes the reaction of lawyer Besnik R. Berisha.