Macedonia Special Prosecution Raises First Indictments

Macedonia's Special Prosecution, SJO, tasked with probing high-level crime and corruption, on Thursday said it was raising its first criminal indictments.

Fourteen persons are indicted for "enticement and carrying out a criminal act against public order", while the other case concerns seven people employed in the secret police, for "illegal destruction of documentation".

The SJO has not not yet revealed the names of those who face criminal charges. However, one of the cases, involving former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, is already known to the public.

This relates to the wiretapped conversations released last year that suggest that former Prime Minister and VMRO DPMNE party leader Gruevski in 2013 ordered an attack on the opposition mayor of Centar municipality in Skopje, Andrej Zernovski [which he evaded], during protests in front of the municipal HQ.

"Fourteen people are indicted for violence, five as instigators and nine as executors [of the violent acts]," deputy special prosecutor Fatime Fetai told a press conferrence in Skopje.

She said that from the content of the wiretapped audio materials and from the further investigation the SJO had carried out, "it was established that the first indicted intentionally asked the second indicted [to organize the violence] and the second indicted accepted [this request] without objections."

Fetai said they had established that the motives of the giver of this order were "solely lucrative, for the preservation of the business interests of the political party establishment and of their friends" that were related to an announced change to the municipal urban plan.

She said the indictees decided to prevent the municipal session from changing the urban plan, by...