Macedonia Police 'Destroyed Evidence of Illegal Wiretaps'

Macedonia's Special Prosecution, tasked with investigating alleged grave crimes on the part of senior officials, told a press conference on Wednesday that it suspects a former Interior Minister, as well as senior officials in the Secret Police, as part of a scheme that destroyed equipment used to illegally eavesdrop.

The prosecution said that in the new investigation, codenamed "Fortress", it suspects five people misused their office to organize the destruction of surveillance equipment in March, April and May 2015.

Some of them are also being investigated for falsifying documents in order to make it look as if the equipment was destroyed a year earlier, in 2014, before the opposition publicised its claims about mass illegal surveillance.

The Interior Minister was then Gordana Jankuloska. The prosecution confirmed it has issued a search and arrest warrant for one of the suspects, but not for the former Interior Minister.
 
"The investigation is ongoing... We have evidence that other people also may have been involved," Deputy Special Prosecutor Lence Risteska said.

She added that they hope to gather more evidence that would reveal who masterminded and organized the wiretapping in the past few years.
 
The opposition Social Democrats insist the masterminds were the former Prime Minister and head of main ruling VMRO DPMNE party, Nikola Gruevski, and his cousin, the former secret police chief, Saso Mijalkov.

Gruevski says the tapes were "fabricated" by unnamed foreign intelligence services and given to the opposition to destabilise the country.
 
The Special Prosecution said it believed that the suspects destroyed two sets of communications surveilance equipment that the secret police, the UBK, had at the...