Writing about the request of the Macedonian prosecution about the security footage of the ex-Prime Minister Gruevski’s escape through the Albanian border, Albanian news site “BalkanWeb” in an article titled “Albania sends footage of Gruevski’s escape“, claims that the footage has already been downloaded from the system and, in accordance with the request from the Macedonian authorities, shall be sent to Skopje.
The text continues to say that the footage shows the moment when Gruevski in a car crosses the border.
Namely, on December 12, 2018 Macedonian authorities reported that the security cameras from Albania would be requested after former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski had fled Macedonia a month earlier to avoid serving a two-year prison term for the “Tank” case. Then, with the assistance of Hungarian diplomats, he escaped through Albania, Montenegro, and Serbia and was granted political asylum in Hungary
However, as already known to the Macedonian public, the prosecution informed that even though two officials went to Albania, the request for international legal assistance was not granted and the recordings were not provided.
Namely, the state public prosecutor Ljubomir Joveski said that the explanation from Albania was that the system with the security cameras at the Albanian border crossings automatically deleted them to open space for newer ones.
“There are several sides to their explanation. One side is that there is too much data in the security cameras and they couldn’t store the footage in the system for longer,” said Joveski.
However, despite the information published in the Albanian media in Macedonia – that the recordings were not received – the news site has not published any new information regarding this case, and the article does not give a detailed explanation on how the procedure is going, nor does it refer to a source from any institution where this “information” was potentially downloaded from.
