Macedonian spy mystery: Did the Macedonian Secret Agency make up the armed crash in Kumanovo?

As on many roads in ethnically mixed parts of Macedonia, Todde Mendol in the northern town of Kumanovo has two unofficial names. Ethnic Albanians call it the “Trima Road”. The rest, “Crazy”.

Early on the morning of May 9, 2015, it became a war zone.

The shooting began when we were praying,” recalled Elysa Mahmudi, imam in New Mosque, which serves the streets with mostly Albanian residents. We didn't know what was going on. ”

At the corner of Pero Ilievski Street, a blast woke Ramadan Baftiu, a part-time taxi driver, from sleep. The narrow, dead path was filled with police officers armed with Kalashnikovs.

I hid in the basement for 14 hours while everything was happening outside,” he said.

Over the next two days, units of the Macedonian anti-terrorist police unit surrounded 39 armed Albanians hiding in three rented houses on Pero Ilievski Street.

Dressed in military clothes and bulletproof vests, they attacked the home of Nezir Murtez, a pensioner who lived two doors away from their besieged homes.

The police opened fire from my roof, from the living room and from the living room,” he said. “They threw everything they had. ”

It was later learned that 31 armed men surrounded were from beyond the border in Kosovo, war veterans with Serbia in the late 1990s. They responded to police with snipers, AK-37 machine guns and machine guns.

The battle destroyed the entire neighborhood. The explosions turned the houses into rubble and set fire to the cars. The armoured vehicles knocked down the walls.

At 9: 00 a.m. on May 10, 2015, when the last gunman surrendered, police numbered eight dead and 37 wounded. Ten armed, including group leaders, were killed in combat, police later announced.

Nikola Gruevski, then prime minister, spoke before the nation on television. With a grim face, he said police had defeated a “terrorist group” that had entered from beyond the border with the plan for “mass killings” in police stations, shopping malls and sports activities.

“One thing is certain,” he said. “Their aim was to destabilise Macedonia. ”

Three years later, while there is a new government in Skopje, nothing is clearer about the motives of the armed.

In early November 2017, the Skopje Criminal Court sentenced 33 men to 745 years in total prison on charges of terrorism. Seven received life sentences, while others were sentenced to 12 to 40 years in prison. Four were acquitted.

But the court gave little answer to a question that many people continue to insist on: Who commanded the armed men to go to Kumanovo? Who's behind all this?

The trial failed to defeat even calls for international investigation into the incident at a politically sensitive time, when Macedonia is seeking NATO membership and EU accession talks, both blocked by neighbouring Greece due to an old bilateral dispute over the country's name.

Prosecutors have insisted that the group acted separately, eager to kill on behalf of seeking more rights for ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. They had been listening before the attempt to arrest turned into a bloodbath.

All indictees denied charges of terrorism, saying they acted in self-defense after police began attacking them. Some said they had been victims of a politically motivated trap lured to Kumanovo by Macedonian authorities, where a trap was set to wait.

The conflict in Kumanovo was completely organised by the Macedonian Secret Agency”

A senior secret service official at the Macedonian Spy Agency

Even before the trial, speculation was great that authorities may have orchestrated a clash in Kumanovo or at least tolerated the group's plan to act there with the aim of causing ethnic tensions and drawing attention to a corruption crisis that had plagued Gruevski-led government and his party V. MRO DPMNE.

Among the dictators of the plot was Zoran Zaev, then leader of the opposition Social Democrats, the SDSM, who is now prime minister. He told reporters several days after the clash: “From strong evidence that the case is a scenario orchestrated by people in power. ”

On the third anniversary of the incident, the Balkan Network for Investigative Journalists, B The IRN, can exclusively detect comments from a senior Secret Agency official opposing the official version of how armed people went to Kumanovo.

BIRN was unable to independently verify the information of this source, while its version of events is staunchly denied by VMRO DPMNE leaders, including Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov.

But taken along with the evidence in court, the data released by the wiretaps and legal records showing that some of the armed men were executed in the group, this unconfirmed claim carries a worthy drama for a novel spying.

According to the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, fighters in Kumanovo were recruited and armed with help from the Secret Agency, which gave them safe passage to Kumanovo before police forces intervened.

The conflict in Kumanovo was completely organised by the Macedonian Secret Agency,” the official told BIRN. “It was a badly organized scenario that went even worse on the ground. ”

B The IERN presented claims, not supported by hard evidence, the Secret Agency. President Ivanov, who oversees the agency and heads the National Security Council, responded personally.

Ivanov denied that the president's agency or cabinet have organised the incident in Kumanovo and named the charges “a desperate attempt to misinterpret with false news and build a negative perception of the institutions”.

Zaev, whose SDSM-led government came to power in May, after ten years of rule by Gruevski's VMRO-DPMNE, said he supports a retrial of the issue. If that happens, authorities have indicated that they can seek help from abroad to help remove the remaining doubts on the issue.

A car destroyed lies on a street in Kumanovo just before the clash. Photo: Amir Idrizi

Good time?

As residents cleaned up the remains after the clash of broken glass, warped metals and burnt bricks, it was impossible not to recall the dark days of 2001.

The area around Kumanovo had been at the heart of a decades-long conflict in 2001 between Albanian security forces and guerrillas of the now disbanded KLA National Liberation Army.

A NATO-brokered peace agreement helped Macedonia avoid a total civil war, addressing many of the frustrations that had sparked the uprising, including the lack of political representation of Macedonia's Albanians, who make up at least one quarter of Macedonia's population of 2.1 million.

The 2001 peace agreement made Albanian official in communities where ethnic Albanians make up at least one quarter of the entire population. It also guaranteed ethnic Albanians to have proportional representation in government and state institutions.

Events Before Kumanovo Fights

February 9, 2015 ) Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's government was caught up in a corruption scandal because the opposition began publishing the wiretapping, which it says incriminates Gruevski and his narrow circle.

April 4, 2015 ) Former police general Stojance Angelov tells the protesters that he has information that “somebody” paid two million euros to “kriminals<x3nd) Albanians to be removed as part of a group of currently disbanded rebels and to provoke interethnic conflicts in the Kumanovo region.

April 10, 2015 ) The government headquarters in Skopje is attacked with a grenade. There are no victims.

April 11, 2015 ) Someone who calls himself “Condance Framework” takes responsibility for the grenade attack and warns of more bombs until Albanians are granted equal rights in Macedonia.

April 21, 2015 ) Forty armed and masked men cross the border from Kosovo and attack a police station in the village of Goshinca, hijacking a large quantity of weapons and ammunition.

April 26, 2015 ) Mirsad Ndekaj, a former Kosovo war fighter with Serbia, takes responsibility for the theft in Goshinca.

April 27, 2015 ) The ruling V party MRO DPMNE announced it will change the date of its party congress, scheduled to take place in Kumanovo on 9 May and 10 May, approaching the congress on May 2nd and 3rd. Local media mention security concerns as a cause.

April 30, 2015 ) Opposition leader Zoran Zaev calls for mass protests on May 17th. About 100,000 people are expected to participate. This time we're not going home until the government collapses,” he says.

May 3, 2015 An explosion occurs in Tetovo at the headquarters of the largest Albanian party in Macedonia and allies in government. No one remains killed.

May 5, 2015 The first of many major protests shakes Skopje as public anger rises on the wiretapping scandal.

May 7, 2015 The opposition publishes wiretapping, which it says shows ministers hiding important information on the death of a well-known journalist, causing anger and confrontation with police in Skopje.

May 9, 2015 Shortly before dawn, gunfire and blasts shake up a neighbourhood of Albanians in Kumanovo, while the anti-terror police fought 39 armed men hiding in three homes. This is the beginning of a two - day deadly clash. Even before the smoke is distributed, critics accuse the government of organising the incident with the aim of avoiding attention from the wiretapping scandal.

In Kumanovo, where 20 thousand ethnic Albanians make up almost half the town's inhabitants, calm had ruled since then. The events of May 9th and 10th raised the possibility of a new ethnic clash.

They also raised a question: Why now?

In his speech to the nation after the clash, Gruevski called on “those who criticise the opposition or the government to now stop, because we now need unity”.

Some critics found this too convenient for the government.

Gruevski had been caught in the scandal since February 2015, when opposition leader Zaev began publishing what he called “bomba” information pieces of secret surveillance he said proved the government was behind the illegal surveillance of over 20 thousand citizens.

The opposition claimed that the decoupled wiretapping applied top officials to multiple crimes, including electoral manipulation, abuse of power and hiding of a murder -- charges the government denied, saying wiretaps were fabricated by foreign agents.

The wiretapping scandal triggered angry protests and calls for Gruevski's resignation. Critics wondered whether Kumanovo's incident could have been devised to dismantle efforts to bring him down.

Gruevski denied all charges, insisting the wiretapping had been fabricated and their course was part of a plot to destabilise the country on the part of “of the secret foreign services”, which had no name, in co-operation with its political opponents in Macedonia.

One of the wiretapping that was released on May 15, 2015, is supposed to have a conversation between Gruevski's cabinet head Martin Protuger and Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska, in which they seem to be playing with the idea of promoting a conflict.

“

“We can crush them in an hour!” responds Jankuloska.

A few days after the clash, Jankuloska resigned. So did Saso Mijalkov, chief of the secret police and cousin of Gruevski. Both said their resignations had nothing to do with Kumanovo but were intended to help solve the country's consuming political crisis, and on which they accused the opposition.

Gruevski himself resigned, in January 2016, under an EU-brokered agreement to end the crisis caused by the wiretapping scandal. In June 2017, he and his group were accused of election manipulation and other alleged crimes.

If Kumanovo was a trick from the government to avoid criticism, it obviously did not work.

BIRN was unable to contact Gruevski for comments, but V MRO DPMNE, which he again directs, answered BIRN's questions in a statement in November 2017.

“The charges of the former opposition are completely false and were long-standing part of a media-led black campaign under their control,” said the spokesman V MRO DPMNE Ivo Kotevski on an email. “Such accusations were part of a well prepared propaganda against the party, with the aim of lowering trust in it.

At the end of the day, neither then nor today, half a year after the SDSM came to power, there was no evidence to support the conclusion that our party representatives were involved in orchestrating the Kumanovo event. ”

Goran Mitevski, director of the Counterintelligence Agency between 1999 and 2001, told BIRN in November 2017 that he had heard unconfirmed reports that the “incident was organised by senior state officials”.

The Intelligence Agency is a special entity by the Secret Agency.

Asked what the government could have benefited from organising such an incident, he speculated that it could have sought an excuse to declare the state of emergency amid calls for early elections.

However, to prove all this, there is a need for an international investigation with the involvement of foreign experts or agents from the region or other foreign countries,” he said.

Inside one of the houses in Kumanovo where the armed men were hiding. Photo: Amir Idrizi

Warnings

While bullets were still crashing through the walls in Kumanovo, skeptics found reasons to be suspicious.

Within hours of the event, social media flared up with the reminder of a speech given five weeks earlier by a former police general named Stojance Angelov. That talk had not received much attention at that time, but it already seemed meaningful.

The retired police general is now the leader of a small opposition party called Dignity. On April 4th 2015, he addressed anti-government protesters in Skopje.

Someone in our country has prepared a monstrous plan to cause interethnic conflict,” Angelov said from the podium, without explaining who this “dicushi” was.

I have information that someone has given two million euros to some Albanians who have nothing to do with the KLA, some criminals from Lipkova [near Kumanovo]. Their job is to claim to be KLA, and kill several police officers or soldiers and cause an interethnic conflict. ”

In November 2017, Angelov told BIRN that his information had come from “people working for state security and other services” and that he had verified it with other secret sources.

The plan was to be paid criminals to recruit ʹ like “side damage” a group of patriotic targets among ethnic Albanians to launch attacks in Macedonia, apparently to protect ethnic Albanians from the state's overcoming, he said he was told.

I said at the time that people close to power were the promoters of this bloody act,” he said. I believe no one wanted to see this tragic consequence, but I believe at some point they lost control. ”

“Somebody in our country has prepared a monstrous plan to cause interethnic conflict”

Former Police General Stojance Angelov

Six days after Angelov's speech, someone threw a grenade outside the government headquarters in Skopje. There were no victims, and the material damage was minimal.

Someone who called himself “Condant Conception” took responsibility for an email sent to the media carrying the KLA logo and in an irritating way, the counterfeit firm of the European Bank Governor.

The fraud threatened further attacks until all Albanians had equal rights with Macedonians.

On May 3, 2015, a bomb exploded in the northern city of Tetovo at the Democratic Union for Integration headquarters DUI, the largest Albanian party and small partner in the government. No one was killed or wounded and no one claimed responsibility for the attack.

But on April 21, 2015, alleged KLA fighters left their mark.

Police reported that 40 armed and masked men wearing KLA symbols had passed by Kosovo and had attacked a police station in the village of Goshince, in the Lipkova area near the border.

They tied and beat four police officers before leaving this police station with four men who took a huge arsenal with guns and ammunition, including a dozen machine guns.

DUI warned Macedonians not to fall prey to what it called “provocation”.

Macedonian news agency Zhurnal quoted the former KLA commander in Lipkova as saying that the secret services had devised the Gosinca incident to fuel ethnic clashes and to move Macedonians to support the government.

The government has paid several people to create a problem here and manipulate public opinion,”, he was quoted.

In July 2017, the top secret services official told BIRN and the secret agency had urged attackers to come to Goshinca to steal weapons, but he offered no evidence.

Five days after the attack in Goshinca, a man named Mirsad Ndkaj, later identified as the murdered leader of Kumanovo's armed men, posted a message on Facebook taking responsibility for the robbery.

“U n The CK has always hit where the enemy hurts the most, he wrote. “We don't want war, but when it is imposed, we will always be ready to protect the beloved Albanian nation”.

Authorities later confirmed that the weapons seized in Goshinca were used in Kumanovo. In addition to the weapons found on Pero Ilievski Street, police found 65 machine guns and eight clips from the same cargo buried in a forest near the city.

The day after the attack on Goshina, V MRO DPMNE announced it would change its congress date, held once every four years, in which Gruevski was running without opponents for a fourth term as party chairman. The congress was scheduled to take place in Kumanovo on 9-10 May, but approached on 2-3 May.

Asked about changing dates, spokesman V MRO DPMNE Kotevski told BIRN that the party had changed the congress in response to the escalation of the political crisis for which it blamed the opposition, “in order to bring the party leadership's full attention to the political crisis”.

He said, “The party had no information on the group and their intentions to enter Kumanovo. ”

Secret Appointment

Rudcaj, leader of the armed, was a former Kosovo Liberation Army fighter during the conflict with Serbia. He was from the town of Gjakova in western Kosovo.

A month after he was declared dead in Kumanovo, the media in Kosovo published a telephone wiretap allegedly dealing with a call between Rudclay and a man who was later identified in court as an Albanian agent working for the Macedonian Secret Services Agency.

The agent's name was Shanasie Memed.

I sent you a message but that number is not working,” says Memeddy on one of the wiretaps, which seems to have been done shortly after the hostage drama in Goshinca. I saw the reaction last night. ”

Light: “Which?”

Memedia: “what you wrote on Facebook. That the KLA invaded the station. ”

Lights: “And did you like it?”

Memedia: “was very, very good. ”

BIRN was unable to contact Memedia, but the top secret service official claimed he was involved in planning the operation in Kumanovo.

Top secret service official identified another man as “ider”: Sinisa Aleksovski, a Secret Services agent who is also part of President Ivanov's cabinet as his security adviser.

Everything was under the command of Sinisa Aleksovski, the president's security adviser, while Shenasi Memeddi was on the ground,” he said.

Contacted by BIRN, Aleksovski refused to comment.

In a TV interview in May 2017, Prime Minister Zaev also linked Aleksovski to the Kumanovo incident.

The “Many structures are involved,” he said. “One is Sinisa Aleksovski. We heard a conversation between him and a man called Commander NATO Mirsad Ndekaj from Kosovo, a notorious criminal and bandit working in these areas: Kosovo, Serbia, Presevo, Kumanovo, Tetovo, Skopje and they have communicated.

For what reason were they supposed to communicate? There's serious information about Sinisa Aleksovski. I think he's the head of the secret service and that he was with Djordje Ivanov, but there's other data on the involvement of even higher structures. ”

President Ivanov, who comes from the VMRO DPMNE ranks and has been head of state since 2009, denied that he or his cabinet had anything to do with what happened in Kumanovo.

Neither I as president nor my cabinet are involved in any way in the Kumanovo case,” he told BIRN in a written answer to questions raised for the Secret Service. The president is only the user of information brought by the Secret Services and other security services. ”

I as president and my cabinet are not involved in any kind of Kumanovo” - Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov.

Ivanov followed: “from the generation of false news, I expect next time to be tied to the murder of [US President John F] Kennedy. Tell at least one fact, not a rumor, speculation or lie, but a fact that links the President's Cabinet to your insights.

I want to inform the public, but I also want to send a message to the fake news generators: we're not going to be in touch. ”

Although Macedonia is a parliamentary democracy and the president's powers are limited, Ivanov is commander-in-chief of the armed forces and head of the National Security Council. He also appoints the Director of Secret Services.

Critics view Ivanov as a strong partisan of his V party MRO DPMNE. In March 2017 he provoked outrage when he refused to give the mandate for Zaev after SDSM won enough deputies to form a government in the alliance with Albanian parties. In May 2017, Ivanov finally surrendered.

Phone hearings published in Kosovo and captured by Macedonian media allude to a meeting in Pristina, noted between secret services officer Memedia and leaders of the Ndecaj group.

Memedia: “Tomorrow I will be in Ferizaj [in southern Kosovo], along with wife, daughter and boys. I thought if you were in Pristina or where are you?

Ndalaj: “We are in Pristina. ”

Memed: “I'll call you tomorrow and I'll meet you for a cup of coffee. ”

Ndalaj: “Okay, we'll meet in Pristina. ”

Memedia: “Say hello to Beg [Rizaj, another leader killed in Kumanovo]. ”

Light: “He welcomes you too. ”

In the court, many accused at least described a meeting in Pristina between Rudcaj and the spy, Memedia.

They say the goal was specifically preparation for Kumanovo and that the meeting was recorded with video. One of the suspects, Andy Krasniqi, said the census is three hours and 17 minutes long.

No such video has been shown.

He [changs] met Shenasi Memedin and another Macedonian boy,”, Krasniqi told the court. I don't know his name, but I know it's from the secret services. ”

Nasuf Bekir, another accused, said co-chairman Beg Rizaj was also at the meeting.

“That tape exists and will be published,” he said. “They planned the project, where they should enter and what they should do. ”

BIRN asked the Secret Service whether its officers met with members of the group before the armed crash. President Ivanov responded, saying: your request is in the wrong address. ”

He wrote: “Directed the question to officials of international organisations and foreign embassies, state bodies and political officials, who had continued communication with leaders of the group.

“asked them about threats of murder, extortion, blackmail, physical violence, and how they did not report these events, contacts and the nature of the talks at the Secret Agency and the Interior Union. There's too many. ”

Former Counterintelligence Agency Director Mitevski said there was no way for the armed men to reach the Todde Mendol Road in Kumanovo without the cooperation of the Secret Services.

When I say there must have been support from the secret services, I say they have had a chance to act close to the border with Kosovo or in any other open environment where civilian victims could be avoided,” she said.

“According to prosecutor information, the group was followed by a quick entry into Macedonia by Kosovo. The conclusion was that the secret service had certain information on the time and place where the group could enter Macedonia. ”

Facial bullets

Without video evidence and assuming that the meeting took place as described, only the people are the ones who can confirm what was discussed between Memed, the two leaders of the group and the second unidentified spy mentioned by the gunman Krasniqi.

Memed was exempted from testifying in court with the principle of state secret after his boss, Secret Services Director Zoran Ivanov, sent a letter to court. Mirsad Ndekaj and Beg Rizaj are both dead.

The mystery also surrounds their deaths. Evidence in court and evidence of legal medicine suggests they may not have been killed in combat, reports.

Two days after the armed clash, Macedonia's Foreign Ministry said in a letter to the Kosovo Embassy in Skopje, seen by BIRN, that Rudcaj and Rizaj were caught alive, along with a man named Arben Rexaj, who was later counted among the dead. The ministry later called this a mistake.

Reports of forensics shown by a defence attorney indicate that Rizaj and Raji had both been killed with a single bullet in their forehead.

Reports give no indication of the distance the bullets flew before the impact.

In my experience, distance assessment is always written,” said defense lawyer Naser Raufi. “This is the first report I've seen without such an assessment. ”

“Axia occurs only when someone is executed”

Defense attorney Naser Raufi

Aleksandar Stankov, of the Institute of Legal Medicine in Skopje, who made the reports, disagreed that such information should have been provided, although he said it was easy to calculate the distance if required.

The action deficit is not mentioned in the protocol, but prosecutors or lawyers can request this information,” he said. “They could have called us and requested additional answers. ”

Based on reports and photographs, defence lawyer Raufi said it is likely that leaders have been shot from a close distance.

This type of similarity can only be achieved from a very close distance, for example a meter,”

There is no way this happened during the fighting, as the prosecution says. The charge says the fighters, or executed leaders, were not facing police at any time during the battle. This closeness occurs only when someone is executed. ”

The accused Andy Krasniqi said in court that Ndekaj and Rizaj were both alive when the group's last surrendered about 9 p.m.

Another suspect, Rufki Dogani, said he had seen them alive in a police station after the clash. An Albanian flag hangs among the remains of a damaged building.

Conspiracy Theory

Perhaps unsurpassed, relatives of the accused armed men see them as heroes who went to Macedonia to fight for the rights of marginalised ethnic Albanians, but were betrayed by authorities who had lured them away.

Fadil Elshani, the father of accused Bajram Elshani, came to Skopje in July 2017 to attend the trial.

Our guys came here for patriotic reasons,” he said. “If they had come to terrorism, they would have killed children, elders or women. ”

Ylber Ndecaj, brother of the group's leader, Mirsad, spoke of BIRN in Pristina after a memorial ceremony for the two-year siege.

“They did not go there to their own head,” he said. “This case was approved by many politicians from Macedonia. And I tell you this based on very safe sources, not just rumors. ”

Ethnic Albanians are not the only ones who think the siege was somehow orchestrated by Macedonian officials. Many non-Albanian people of Kumanovo are also cynical.

“They are people who took money to come to Kumanovo and provoke incidents, with the aim of causing war in Macedonia,” said a man in Skopje's main square.

The father of one of the police officers injured in the event also believed in conspiracy theories. “Everything was invented by politicians,” he told BIRN, refusing to be identified. All eight cops were killed for nothing. ”

Since the siege, destroyed houses have been rebuilt with red bricks, thanks to a government compensation fund.

One follows to stay in ruins, on the corner of Todde Mendol Street with Pero Ilievski Street. It belongs to Irfan Lutfi, a barber who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for joining the group after they arrived in Kumanovo. Some hope it will remain such a reminder of the massacre.

The shells are scattered at the scene in Kumanovo.

It was so terrible,” said the imam Elysa Mahmudi. “We will never forget what happened. This was a scenario someone prepared... Thanks to Allah, there were no civilian casualties. ”

Many people in Kumanovo and throughout the country already rest their hope on an international investigation to whiteen all that brought about fighting.

In September 2017, Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski said he would seek such an investigation.

This could help the public find the truth the right way,” he said. “can be a procedure in which all citizens can trust”.

Benjamin Arifi is a TV journalist in Macedonia who works as news editor on ENJA television in Skopje. This article was developed as part of the Balkan Journalism Exchange, supported by the E Foundation. RSTE and the Open Society Foundations, in co-operation with the Balkan Network for Investigative Journalism.