North Macedonia President Rejects Allegations Against Intelligence Chief

President Stevo Pendarovski defended Erol Musliu on Thursday, calling him a "a top professional", after the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI party, the junior partner in North Macedonia's ruling coalition, criticised his appointment as the new National Intelligence Agency chief.

The DUI alleged that Musliu might be implicated in wrongdoing during a shootout between ethnic Albanian gunmen and the security forces in the northern town of Kumanovo in May 2015 that left 18 people dead, including eight police officers.

But Pendarovski said that Musliu "has built his career in this country and has perfect cooperation with the [security] services of all allied countries… His appointment was positively assessed by the allied countries' services."

Earlier on Thursday, Vice Prime Minister Bujar Osmani, speaking as a high-ranking DUI representative, said that his party has been "upset" by Musliu's appointment.

"Our information says that [Pendarovski's] decision was based on a lack of information and that it was not ill intended," Osmani told a press conference.

"However, the DUI thinks that until full light is shed on the Kumanovo events, no person who was part of the [secret] services back then should lead such sensitive institutions. Thus we expect that the president to collect more info and reconsider his decision," he added.

Life sentences were given to seven of the 37 defendants in the Kumanovo case in November 2017. The rest mainly got long jail sentences.

They are currently disputing these sentences before the Court of Appeals, insisting that the shootout was a set-up by the then authoritarian government led by former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, which the DUI was also part of.

Musliu was also being considered as...