Turns out that the former Prime of Macedonia Nikola Gruevski escaped Macedonia through Albania. Albanian police said on Thursday he left Albania on Sunday evening, November 11, through Hani Hotit border checkpoint.
He went on the border with his ID card. Albanian police announced that he traveled with a car of the Hungarian Embassy in Tirana, inside which besides the driver there was also an embassy employee, equipped with diplomatic passports, who returned to Albania within less than one hour.Albanian police authorities are carrying out verifications to find out when and from which border checkpoint the former Macedonian Prime Minister entered in Albania. Macedonian authorities issued arrest warrant for him on November 12 after he did not voluntarily appear in serving a two-year jail sentence due to a criminal offense. While the international arrest warrant, issued by Interpol Skopje, arrived at Interpol Tirana, according to the Albanian police announcement, on November 13 in the evening.
Meanwhile in Skopje, Macedonian authorities are trying to find out of how he did escaped and who helpedhim. The Basic Prosecution suspects that persons who have abused their office and authority have done so, but law enforcement officials in Skopje still do not speak formally about the announcement coming from Tirana on the ways of Gruevski's escape to Hungary.
It is still unclear in which Hungarian Embassy has applyed for asylum. Budapest authorities say they are considering his asylum demand that, according to them, the former prime minister had filed at a Hungarian diplomatic office outside Macedonia.
According to rumors in Skopje, former Prime Minister Gruevski stopped in Belgrade, where he made a request at the Hungarian Embassy and then went to Budapest. The law enforcement and security authorities in Skopje does not reject or confirm these suspicions.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban's cabinet chief Gergely Gulyasu told reporters in Budapest on Thursday that Hungary has not helped the former prime minister leave his country.
"Traveling across the Balkans is possible with identity cards, and Hungarian authorities have nothing to do with the departure of the former Macedonian Prime Minister from the territory of his state. As he supports the demand for asylium in the absence of fair procedures but also threats to his security, the decision was made for security reasons to be heard at the Immigration Office in Budapest," the spokesman Gergely Gulyasu said.
Hungary is known for rejecting asylum seekers at the border where they came from.
"The Hungarian state has not given assistance and can not be linked in any way to the decision of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski to leave Macedonia," Gergely Gulyasu added.
In Skopje, Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov talked by telephone with his Hungarian counterpart, Peter Siarto, who emphasized the fact that it is about a convicted person, against whom four other court proceedings are under way for serious criminal offenses.