Skopje Court sentenced the fugitive former Prime Minister of North Macedonia, Nikola Gruevski, to a year and a half in jail for inciting a mob attack on an opposition-held municipality in the capital in 2013, Balkan Insight reported.
Gruevski was tried in absentia as he is on the run and wanted to serve a two-year jail sentence in another case. The trial started in December 2016 but court hearings have frequently been postponed, mainly due to the absence of some of the defendants. Prime Minister Gruevski, whose party ran the government from 2006 to 2016, fled the country in 2018 to avoid serving a two-year jail sentence in another case in which he was convicted of the illicit purchase of a luxury limousine.
Gruevski is now in Hungary, where he has been granted asylum from what it called “political persecution” in Macedonia.
Gruevski, who has close ties with Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said he chose Hungary because it is a member of NATO and the European Union and a country with “independent institutions.”
North Macedonia has issued an international warrant for his arrest. /Compiled from wires
