Berisha: “In Sarandë, the state and crime are one” — the killing of a Portuguese tourist in Ksamil was almost state-sanctioned

Democratic Party leader Sali Berisha has declared that “in Sarandë, the state and crime are one” as he reacted to the killing of 20-year-old Portuguese tourist Luis Miguel Varela Mendes in Ksamil.

In connection with the incident, the State Police arrested the perpetrator and several other people, while declaring another person wanted.

In a statement to the media, Berisha described the killing of the foreign national as an “almost state-sanctioned murder” and linked it to the security and crime situation in Sarandë. He accused the government of allowing, in his view, the boundaries between the state and crime to disappear in the area’s tourism industry.

“The killing of the 20-year-old Portuguese tourist in Ksamil is, according to the information available, almost a state-sanctioned murder. I say this not in the sense that he was executed by people in uniform, but in the true sense that the tourism industry in Sarandë is in the clutches of crime,” Berisha said.

“In Sarandë, the state and crime are one. The law does not exist. In Sarandë, and not only there, people widely speak of an economy based on drug and human trafficking, among other things, which thrives from evening until morning in nightclubs that operate until dawn,” he added.

“On the beaches that have been taken over, where not a single meter of public beach can be found, everything is dominated by the powerful, who sell sun loungers for hundreds of euros,” Berisha said, among other remarks.