There is no surprise at all in the decision of the Supreme Court to uphold the verdict for the “Tank” case, which is only part of the wider and more intense political persecution conducted by the government, former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said Friday in a Facebook post.

According to him, Zaev through his intermediaries who acted and transmitted messages on his behalf, most often his close lawyer, continuously exerted pressure and influence on the Supreme Court and he does the same on the lower courts, including the criminal court for other cases from the corpus of those cases created with political motives and interventions and which are part of the political persecutions in Macedonia. The messages are always from one person, only the “postmen” sometimes change, and often the “delivery” is personal, sometimes public.

The situation has reached such a level of fear among the judges that in some cases the court is afraid to even accept and hear at least one witness proposed by the defense and they accept all the proposed witnesses from the prosecution. This is because if they accept and hear a defense witness they may be embarrassed by the verdict which they are aware they have to pass unjustly but feel that if they do not pass it, there will be personal consequences, Gruevski said.