New Data on Eavesdropping Aired in Macedonia

At its 27th press conference on the issue of illegal surveillance in Macedonia, the opposition Social Democrats on Tuesday presented what they claimed were secret police spreadsheets containing data about more than 20,000 eavesdropped persons.

"The data about the illegal surveillance originate from the existing communications surveillance system of the Secret Police, UBK... No foreign services [were involved], no surveillance vans, no espionage and no coup attempts", the opposition leader Zoran Zaev said, referring to the government's claims that the tapes came into the opposition's hands via outside intelligence agencies.

Journalists were handed samples of the lists that contain telephone numbers, alleged police aliases of the targeted persons as well as in some cases home addresses.  Zaev said the documents contain the names of the police operators tasked to follow their communications, which have not been published, but were handed last week to the prosecution together with all the rest of the material.

"We are talking about material of over 10,000 pages that has been handed to the Public Prosecution," Zaev said, adding that the evidence cannot be treated as classified because of the nature of the surveillance that was conducted illegally.

The documents say that the police pseudonym for Zaev was "DS Zeko". The former President of Macedonia and former opposition leader, Branko Crvenkovski, was tagged "Cross". The current Transportation Minister was nicknamed "Tutin", ruling party MP Silvana Boneva was tagged as "Bosli" , the editor-in-chief of the pro-government TV station Sitel, Dragan Pavlovic-Latas, was nicknamed "Talas" while the former Prime Minister and opposition leader, Vlado Buckovski, was "NDS Buva".

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