Fresh Macedonia Wiretaps Target DUI Party

The wiretapped telephone conversations, allegedly containing the voices of Ali Ahmeti, the head of the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, and some of his associates, were published by an anonymous source on a Facebook page called Pronto MK.

What are alleged to be the voices of former vice Prime Minister Musa Xhaferi and DUI MP Ermira Mehmeti can also be heard in the recordings.

The same Facebook page, which was originally launched in neighbouring Kosovo in August, also published images of dozens of alleged audio files, hinting it will publish more materials in the future.

"This proves that the system does not function. The Special Prosecution, the public prosecution, the interior ministry and the Directorate for Personal Data Protection are not doing their job," an unnamed source from the DUI was quoted as saying by the Dnevnik daily on Tuesday.

"These institutions should discover who is revealing the illegally wiretapped materials and arrest those people, and also delete those conversations from social networks," the source said.

The new wiretaps have caused DUI's senior partners in the government, the main ruling VMRO DPMNE party, and the main opposition Social Democrats, SDSM, to exchange barbs, blaming each other for being the source of the material.

The SDSM insists that the wiretaps were secretly released by the VMRO DPMNE party in order to force its partners to stay in the ruling coalition ahead of the December 11 early elections.

"Those who ordered the wiretapping in Macedonia, [VMRO DPMNE leader Nikola] Gruevski, and [former secret police chief Saso] Mijalkov and their associates are using the materials to threaten and blackmail. The message they are now obviously sending to DUI is evident," SDSM...

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