Macedonian Judge Denies Being Communist-Era Spy

He protested his innocence at a meeting of the Commission on Monday. The Lustration Committee which was established to prevent former communist-era informants from holding public office, last week confronted him with a secret service report that it said provided evidence he was a spy during the Socialist Yugoslav period.

“I am clean and I do not plan to step down from office,” Ivanovski told reporters after the meeting.

“The commission suspects me of being an informant because the secret police recorded me as such, without my knowledge or consent,” he said.

Prior to his open statement, Ivanovski's identity had remained secret, like those of any alleged or actual informants, as required by Macedonia's Lustration Law.

He demanded his case be heard in public.

He said he came under police scrutiny in 1964 when, as a juvenile, he joined a secret organisation aimed at unifying all ethnic Macedonian territories.

He said that he was then treated as a radical and was forced to confess the names of his fellow members which might have prompted his listing as an informant.

Ivanovski said the attempt to discredit him and his decisions as a judge came from the highest political sources, including the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.

Gruevski said on Sunday that the lustration investigation called into question the credibility and legitimacy of recent rulings made by the Constitutional Court.

Gruevski's anger with the Constitutional Court started last year after it annulled several of the governments’ key policies including those aimed at giving additional benefits to parents in regions with low birth rates, the introduction of religious education in primary schools and the  'Skopje 2014' plans to revamp the capital.

Ivanovski became a judge at the Constitutional Court following his election by parliament in 2003.  Parliament appointed him head of the court in 2007, one year after Gruevski came to power.

The lustration commission has three days  to reach its final decision on Ivanovski.

If he is found to have been an informant, Ivanovski has a right to appeal before the Administrative Court.

Macedonia is following in the steps of many former communist and socialist states which have enacted similar laws in order to address past injustices stemming from politically motivated judicial proceedings.