Macedonia Police Intensify Hunt for Ex-PM Gruevski

Police launched a wide search for former Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski after he failed to show up for three days to start serving his two-year jail sentence for the illicit purchase of a luxury limousine.

"We have been looking for Gruevski at his home, we are checking vehicles. We will enter any premises if there is a [court] warrant," Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski told media on Tuesday.

Spasovski insisted that the police have been acting strictly on court orders, and that if there is anyone who should be blamed for not locating Gruevski immediately, it should be the courts, which, he said, don't remand people in custody who could abscond.

Gruevski's whereabouts have been unknown since Friday, when Skopje Criminal Court rejected his appeals for a postponement of his prison sentence.

An arrest warrant was issued and the search was launched on Monday evening after the court failed to deliver him its decision saying he was obliged to report to prison immediately.

On Monday evening, police attempted several times without sucess to locate Gruevski at his home address in Skopje.
 
Later in the evening and late into the night, media outlets saw police searching in central Skopje around the HQ of the main opposition VMRO DPMNE party. Gruevski was VMRO DPMNE's long standing president before stepping down in late 2017.

At an extraordinary press conference in front of the party HQ, VMRO DPMNE's secretary general Igor Janushev insisted that Gruevski was not hiding inside the building, calling on police to search the premises if they had a proper court warrant.
 
"VMRO DPMNE is under police siege… Never in the history of Macedonia has there been such use of force against a political opposition,"...