WARSAW — Macedonia’s
main opposition leader has been formally indicted on charges of
wiretapping and antigovernment activities after months of political
turmoil, prosecutors said this week.
The
leader of the left-wing Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, Zoran
Zaev, was charged with “one continuous criminal act of unauthorized
wiretapping and audio recording” as well as “violence against
representatives of the highest authorities,” according to a statement posted on the state prosecutor’s website late Thursday.
The
indictment came shortly after Mr. Zaev unveiled plans for a mass
protest in the capital of the landlocked Balkan nation, Skopje, to be
held this month — “the biggest one that the country has seen,” he said.
Macedonian
politics have been rocked for months by Mr. Zaev’s release, bit by bit,
of leaked transcripts of what he said were thousands of government-made
recordings of conversations involving government officials and others.
Mr. Zaev says they point to instances of corruption, vote-rigging and
manipulation of the criminal justice system.
Officials
in the conservative government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski have
said that while some of the recordings appear to be legitimate, others
are fabricated.
Mr.
Gruevski has blamed an unnamed foreign intelligence service for making
the recordings and instigating the scandal. Officials from his party
have labeled it an attempt to topple the government.
The
scandal is a blow the image of Macedonia, a poor country on the
southern fringe of the Balkans, which has been seeking to join the
European Union and NATO.
Mr.
Zaev said at a news conference in Skopje this week that the opposition
had more than 100,000 transcripts of conversations and over 18,000 text
messages from more than 12,000 telephone numbers, and that it would
continue to make them public and share them with prosecutors.
Western
leaders have become increasingly alarmed over what they say is growing
authoritarianism in Macedonia. Diplomats from the United States and
Germany, among others, have called in recent weeks for a thorough and
transparent investigation of the scandal.
“There
are serious allegations about government abuse of power,” Jess L.
Baily, the United States’ ambassador to Macedonia, said in an interview
with a local television station last week.
Mr.
Zaev was placed under preliminary indictment in January, and his
passport was confiscated. The formal announcement of the indictment
shows that prosecutors believe they have amassed sufficient evidence to
bring him to trial, a date for which will be set shortly.
While
Mr. Zaev remained free after the preliminary indictment, several
others, including employees of Macedonia’s Interior Ministry, were
placed in pretrial detention and will remain there now that the
indictments have been formalized.
Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting from London.
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