The Skopje court is due to reach a verdict in the first instance in the massive 2015 wiretapping scandal. Defendants are Saso Mijalkov, former head of the UBK security service, former Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska and a number of UBK and Interior Ministry officials.
Mijalkov tried to flee the country over the weekend, but returned on Tuesday – under threat or after reaching some kind of a deal with the Zaev regime.
The wiretapping was used by Zaev to start the 2015 Colored Revolution. The charges were initially filed against Zaev, for politically abusing the tapes, against former UBK chief Zoran Verusevski who is now Zaev’s security adviser and two UBK technicians. They were accused of abusing the system to record conversations of VMRO-DPMNE officials, including Mijalkov, Jankuloska and Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski – as the recordings that Zaev shared with the public included only a token few harmless conversations that he or other SDSM party officials conducted.
But after the case was given to a Zaev loyalist – Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva – it was turned on its head and she dropped the charges against Verusevski and Zaev, and accused Mijalkov and Jankulovska. At the same time, Zaev’s SDSM party lauded the two technicians as heroic whistleblowers, only adding to the confusion about the trial. Lence Ristoska, a prosecutor who worked on the case with the now thoroughly disgraced Janeva, demanded maximum penalties, including 13 years in prison for Mijalkov, which likely spurred him to make a run for it. But due to the fact that since 2015 he has sided with the Zaev regime on a number of issues – such as the imposed name change and attempts to weaken VMRO-DPMNE further by creating factions in the party, it is still possible that he will get a light sentence, despite the escape attempt.
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