Photos: Aleksander Dinevski (above). Ljubomir Frckoski (below right).
THE ACE & THE INTERIOR MINISTER
The unusual choice for “human rights activist” – Ljubomir Danailov Frckoski.
It’s a puzzling selection by the Helsinki Committee for Macedonia – link – to have on board an ex politician, ex Interior Minister who ordered extensive wiretapping and wrongfully dismissed an intelligence officer in the early 1990s
– Former Macedonian Intelligence Officer, Alexander Dinevski, is no stranger to controversy.
THE JORDAN MIJALKOV MYSTERY DEEPENS – Why did Macedonia’s Interior Minister Frckoski order intelligence officer’s arrest in 1992?
by Sasha Uzunov
Professor Doctor Ljubomir Danailov Frckoski, who in recent times has cultivated the image of a mild mannered public intellectual who critiques mock baroque statues, had a more ruthless side to his stage personna as Macedonia’s Interior Minister, ordering the arrest of a highly respected counter-intelligence officer and seizing documents relating to his successor Jordan Mijalkov (father of Saso Mijalkov, Macedonian Intelligence chief forced to resign in 2015 during anti government protests ironically over government wiretapping) killed in a mysterious car crash in Serbia in late 1991.
WELCOME TO BRAJCINO ? DOBRODOJDOVTE VO BRAJCINO?
Alexander (Aleksandar) “Aco” Dinevski , an officer with the Interior Ministry’s SDB (Sluzba za Drzavna Bezbednost – State Security Service) was arrested on the 13 July 1992 whilst on annual summer vacation in his father’s village of Brajcino, in the Lake Prespa region of Macedonia. The order had come from Interior Minister Frckoski over claims that Dinevski had been leaking secrets.
The Interior Ministry runs the police force and intelligence services.
Dinevski, flanked by SDB officers, was then driven back to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia and made to hand over his work files from his office safe as well as having his flat (apartment) in Skopje searched and private documents and books seized, including material relating to Mijalkov.
He later was released from custody and began court proceedings against Minister Frckoski over wrongful dismissal. In 1993 during my time as a reporter with the MILS news agency in Skopje I met Dinevski and attended his court trial on 18 March 1993. His lawyer being the well known attorney Rafael Cerepnalkovski-Rafe, later to become a Supreme Court judge. The matter was eventually settled and Dinevski compensated.
Dinevski is no stranger to controversy. As a young reformist intelligence officer, he together with seven other colleagues, known as The Eight (Osumminata na RSVR), including Slobodan Bogoevski (now at the centre of a recent US investigation into a bribery scandal involving the sale of Macedonia’s telecommunications network to Magyar Telekom in 2005-06. see link ), began pushing for reforms in Macedonia’s interitor ministry then under Federal Communist Yugoslav control. His group also exposed corruption and abuse of power by Macedonia’s communist ruling elite, namely Lazar Kolisevski, a close collaborater with Yugoslav ruler Marshal Tito.
In 1991 Macedonia became independent after leaving the collapsing Federal Yugoslavia, caused in most part in Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s attempts to set up a Greater Serbia – see link
Recently Dinevski was released after spending two years in jail on alleged and controverisal espionage charges laid by Macedonia’s government led by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. see link. He denies his guilt and claims he was set up. There are plans to fight to overturn the conviction.
Dinevski was a staunch critic of the Gruevski government’s Lustration Commission, set up to reveal ex intelligence informers from the Yugoslavist period of Macedonia (1944-91), claiming the process was selective and documents open to tampering.
read on: link
A TEAM UZUNOV investigation, citing declassified Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) files confirmed that a genuine ex Yugoslav intelligence operative, Martin Trenevski, was not put through the Lustration Commission but appointed Macedonia’s Ambassador to NATO (2010-14) by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.
read on: link
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UPDATE – 2 February 2016 – Dinevski has lodged an appeal with Macedonia’s Court of Appeals to have his conviction overturned. It has been deferred til the end of February 2016. This post from Dinevski in Macedonian on Facebook, revealing that both pro-government and opposition media stayed away from the initial court hearing, with only one journalist turning up.
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More on Martin Trenevski:
VANKOVSKA versus TRENEVSKI – Albright’s legendary rudeness !
Scrutinising Macedonia’s Foreign Policy – Vankovska versus Trenevski at NATO (2010-14).
Some of Macedonia’s “foreign relations experts” seem to have kooky ideas on the importance of alliances etc. You’ll notice that a lot of energy has been expended in critiquing Macedonia’s relationship with Israel and Hungary but the blow-torch of scrutiny doesn’t apply to say Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and even Kosovo.
An example of the weak and hilarious scrutiny of Macedonian Foreign policy is the attempted very soft takedown of Macedonia’s Ambassador to NATO, Martin Trenevski by “intellectual” Professor Doctor Biljana Vankovska. In effect, she turned Trenevski into a kind of anti-NATO hero.
It’s more like tickling Trenevski with a feather rather than tearing him apart. Water off a ducks back so to speak. Metaphorically speaking, It’s like going after a bank robber for parking in a disabled car par spot but ignoring the glaring fact he has just robbed a bank…
In essence her criticism is aimed at his rude behaviour. France’s President Charles De Gaulle built a whole post war political career on being rude to NATO, culminating in France’s withdrawal from the alliance in 1966.
Even Macedonian pundit Borjan Jovanovski, who claims to be pro-NATO, has been “rude” to NATO on many occasions, as in defending the regime in Serbia, which is anti-NATO, as well as attacking NATO and EU member Hungary.
Vankovska, who claims to be a miltary and geo-political strategist with extensive contacts, goes after Trenevski over his “rudeness” but misses or ignores the real scandal, that Trenevski was a one time intelligence operative for YUGOSLAVIA under journalist cover. With the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, the federal intelligence services (UDBa/SDB and KOS and SID) aparatus were taken over by Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian regime. The breakaway republics, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia kept their republican UDBas.
You’d think that she would have at least tried to dig up some real dirt on Trenevski by asking around. There are retired intelligence agents Vladimir Pivovarov or Ivan Babanovski she could have asked. But it appears that anything linked to the former Yugoslavia or current day Serbia is ignored.
Surely, if someone worked for Yugoslav state run newsagency TANJUG as an overseas correspondent as did Trenevski in Australia (1986-89), it would have raised alarm bells in Vankovska’s head as an “expert?”
It’s common knowledge that Soviet, Yugoslav, East German etc journalists working overseas during the Cold War (1946-89) where intelligence operatives. Surely, this would have aroused some intellectual curiousity in Vankovska?
Intelligence agents never really retire, so goes the story. Hypothetically speaking, how do we know someone so opposed to NATO might be doing so because he or she has been ordered by say Belgrade and not out of rudeness?
TEAM UZUNOV applied for the AUSTRALIAN Security Intelligence Organistion (ASIO) file on Trenevski during his stay in Australia (1986-89). Very easy process, only that it takes time waiting. The file confirms Trenevski was a high level intelligence officer reporting directly to Belgrade outside the normal diplomatic chain of command in the Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra. We did this because our curiousity was aroused because of the TANJUG connection.
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See stories for more at these links:
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She could have taken Trenevski and Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski apart over Trenevski’s appointment to the sensitive position to NATO and for not going through the government’s much criticised Lustration Commission.
Instead Vankovska attacked Trenevski for being rude to NATO.
An analogy would be criticising a bank robber for placing his get away car in a reserved Disabled Car Parking Spot or a Parents with Prams parking zone in the nearby shopping centre whilst robbing a bank, but not criticising him robbing a bank. Hilarious !
Ex US Foreign Minister (Secretary of State) and ex US Ambassador to the UN and the architect of the NATO war in Kosovo in 1999, Madeleine Albright, used rudeness and being pushy as her part of her shtick !
Vankovska quote in Macedonian from Utrinski Vesnik newspaper about Trenevski’s rudeness:
„Паднав од смеа. Мислев дека сум јас најанти-НАТО во Македонија“, беше реакцијата на професорката Билјана Ванковска вчера околу презентацијата на новиот амбасадор на Македонија во Алијансата, Мартин Треневски. „Едно е да имаш личен став, или научен, но дипломат е дипломат зашто внимава што зборува. Ме изненади неумешноста со која ги кажуваше нештата и мислам дека досега немало понедипломатски настап на кандидат за амбасадор на Македонија“, оцени таа.
Дипломати со контакти во НАТО оваа слика за Треневски ја сметаат за олеснителна околност за Македонија, иако звучи парадоксално. Сега барем ќе знаат со сигурност со кого си имаат работа, па нема да го прашуваат за мислење и нема да го земаат за сериозно, порачуваат тие.
Utrinski Vesnik article – 2010. Link here