Macedonia Widens Hunt for Former Spies

Unlike the original law, which probed only current high-ranking holders of public office, the changes mean that former politicians, journalists, university professors, lawyers and religious clergy will now also have to file statements that they were not police collaborators under the communist regime.

The parliament passed the changes in late February. The move was initiated by the ruling centre-right VMRO DPMNE party and its junior partner, the Democratic Union for Integration.

Opposition parties, along with some observers, have opposed the move, expressing concern that it may allow the government to intimidate opponents.

Tome Adziev, the head of the Lustration Commission, a body tasked with determining who worked as a spy for the former secret service, has said that the amendments enter into effect this week and that they will soon set deadlines for submitting statements.

“The former politicians have a deadline of 30 days and we will soon do the same with the journalists and professors,” Adziev says.

The process of lustration in Macedonia has been marred with controversy from the start.

Since the process began in 2008, only one person has been declared a spy and alleged evidence against several others was rejected.

That one person is Trendafil Ivanovski, the former head of the Constitutional Court, who will now have to leave office after the supreme court on Friday confirmed the findings of the Lustration Commission against him.

Ivanovski, who claims he was framed by the government, says he will take his case to the European Court for Human Rights.

“The whole procedure against me was a fake. There was no fair trial,” Ivanovski told media after hearing the court’s decision on Friday.

Ivanovski’s claims have fueled suspicions that the lustration is used selectively. During his term as head of the constitutional court, judges overthrew several key government policies, including the religion classes in schools and the so-called baby boom policy.

In March 2010, the court, under his lead, also shortened the time span of the lustration law, originally intended to be applicable until 2008. The court ruled that the law may only cover the period from 1945 to 1991 and not the period after the country gained independence and became a democratic society.

This infuriated the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who on several occasions publically accused the constitutional court and its then head of teaming up with the country’s opposition, the Social Democrats.

With the new changes that take effect this week, the lustration time span increases even further- it is now applicable until 2019.