Macedonia’s one time Ambassador to NATO, Martin Trenevski
TRENEVSKI YUGO SPY UNDER JOURNALIST COVER IN AUSTRALIA 1985-89.

TEAM UZUNOV EXCLUSIVE – Is Macedonia’s Lustration process corrupt?

 – How did a man with a Yugoslav intelligence role under journalistic cover slip through Macedonia’s Lustration process?

by Sasha Uzunov

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) closely monitored Martin Trenevski, a reporter–which ASIO assessed to be an intelligence operative under cover–with the then Yugoslav State news agency TANJUG, who was sent to Sydney, Australia as a correspondent from 1985 to 1989.

After the collapse of Communist Federal Yugoslavia into a number of successive independent states, Trenevski became Minister for Information in that first Macedonian government led by Prime Minister Nikola Kljusev in 1991, which led Macedonia to independence from Yugoslavia in September 1991.

Later he became a diplomat, and was was appointed Ambassador to NATO in 2010 before finishing late last year. Trenevski’s current and second wife is also a Macedonian diplomat.

Trenevski was born in Skopje, the Macedonian capital in 1949 and graduated from the University of Cyril and Methodius in that city in 1973, and specialising in English. He began his career as a journalist and eventually found work with the state run news agency TANJUG, which was originally modelled on the Soviet TASS news agency.

ASIO documents, newly de-classified, reveal that Trenevski was an intelligence operative with links to both Yugoslav Intelligence the SDB (UDBa) and the highly elite SID intelligence unit.

Before Trenevski touched down in Sydney with his then first wife and small young daughter, ASIO put out an alert.

ASIO issued a special order for Trenevski to be monitored closely over a 6 month period beginning in December 1988 because he fell into the category of  “suspect terrorist/espionage.”

ASIO identified Trenevski’s previous relationship with a Yugoslav Intelligence office, Vasil Panov, also in Australia.  It also suggested that Trenevski’s TANJUG predecessor Vladimir Holovka was also an intelligence officer under journalistic cover. TEAM UZUNOV also revealed that another TANJUG correspondent in Australia, Milos Curcic was a Yugoslav intelligence operative in the late 1960s and early 1970s. see link here:

During a tapped phone conversation, ASIO noticed that Trenevski spoke in code, indicating he had security training….

Trenevski’s link to another Yugoslav intelligence unit SID and its operative in Australia, Stanojlo Glisic.

In 1986 Trenevski was recorded during a phone tap by ASIO, passing on names of Australian-Macedonians involved in a protest against the Greek Embassy in Canberra over the Greek government’s poor treatment of its ethnic Macedonian minority.

Trenevski had an association with a New South Wales Member of Parliament, Frank Walker, and wanted to invite him to a barbecue in 1986 at the Yugoslav consulate in Sydney in regards to the Australian Yugoslav Community Centre. But for reasons unknown the consulate did not want other guests at the barbecue, namely journalists, about the friendship between Walker and the consulate.

CRITIC OF MACEDONIA’S LUSTRATION PROCESS

Alexander (Aleksandar) “Aco” Dinevski , an officer with Macedonia’s Interior Ministry’s SDB (Sluzba za Drzavna Bezbednost – State Security Service) was arrested on the 13 July 1992. The order had come from Interior Minister Ljubomir Frckoski, from the Social Democrats government (SDSM), over claims that Dinevski had been leaking secrets. Dinevski later in a deposition revealed that Frckoski had been tapping phones. see previous story go to link:

Dinevski was later released and won a civil court case for wrongful dismissal in 1993.

Dinevski had been an UDBa officer in then Communist Yugoslavia but together with 7 other young officers in Macedonia began to expose some of the corruption within the Interior Ministry in 1988.

The Macedonian and international media largely ignored Dinevski’s story in 1993, the question is why was Frckoski being protected from scrutiny over abuse of power and phone taps?

DINEVSKI CRITIC OF GRUEVSKI’S LUSTRATION:

Dinevski became a critic of current Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s Lustration Commission, a judicial body set up to investigate former Communist informers.

Dinevski told EU pundit Sinisa Jakov-Marusic: “From my experience in the security forces, I know that many operatives were adding stuff to their reports that was not true, naming informants they never met… and now we pronounce people as spies based on those documents.”

Dinevski is now jail at the hands of the Gruevski government for involvement in a foreign intelligence plot but maintains he is innocent.

The Gruevski government, from the VMRO-DPMNE party, has been accused by the main Opposition party, SDSM, has released phone recordings alleging extensive corruption and phone tapping by the government. The government denies the charges but the country has been hit by a political crisis with massive demonstrations and counter demonstrations. The European Union has intervened to resolve the crisis.

The revelation that Martin Trenevski, hand picked by Prime Minister Gruevski, to be Macedonia’s NATO Ambassador in a bid to join the alliance will raise serious questions as to how the Lustration Commission missed Trenevski’s espionage past.

NEW LEAD TO CROATIAN SIX CASE?

False Flag Operation – One of Australia’s infamous and longest terrorism trials in the early 1980s..

MARTIN TRENEVSKI ASIO FILE –  NEW LEAD TO CROATIAN SIX CASE?

Contained in the newly de-classified Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) file of Martin Trenevski, the former Yugoslav intelligence operative in Australia under journalism cover (1985-89) and later Macedonia’s Ambassador to NATO, is this incredible hand written ASIO note –

In 1989, a man by the name of Tomo Beram came forward with information about the Croatian Six set up alleging an Australian policeman, presumably from the New South Wales state police, involved in the arrests of alleged Croatian terrorists, had Yugoslav connections.

One major Yugoslav intelligence (UDBa/SDB) false flag operation success was the Croatian Six case, which saw six Australian Croats Max Bebic, Vic Brajkovic, Tony Zvirotic, Joe Kokotovic and his brother Ilija Kokotovic, and Mile Nekic set up by Vico Virkez, real name Vitomir Misimovic, another UDBa operative–and arrested by New South Wales Police state police in 1979 and later convicted on bogus terrorism charges.

Virkez, a Bosnian Serb posing as a Bosnian Croat, born in 1951 arrived in Melbourne, Australia in 1970, married a Croatian woman but later abandoned her and their child and moved to Sydney, eventually settling in NSW country town of Lithgow, where he met Bebic.

Beram wanted to take his claim to the Ombudsman, presumably in the state of New South Wales, but had second thoughts after the Australian Federal Police did not express any interest in the matter.

The Croatian Six all did a decade or so of jail time before being released. They are still fighting to clear their name and have their convictions overturned 35 years later.

VJEKOSLAV KRSNIK – TANJUG & UDBA !

Also, another Tanjug correspondent who had worked in Sydney in the 1970s by the name of Vjekoslav Krsnik had allegedly “switched sides” in 1989 and gone over to the independence seeking Croats in Toronto, Canada after allegedly being an UDBa / SDB officer…