Ljube Boskoski, former Interior Minister and leader of the United for Macedonia party, was released from prison on Friday, after serving a five years sentence for unlawful funding of his party. Zivko Pejkovski, director of the Idrizovo prison, told MIA that conditions for early release of Boskoski were met, several days before he served his sentence.
Boskoski was arrested after the 2011 general elections, while he was taking money in cash from a businessman who was funding his campaign outside of the rules governing party finance. Boskoski was detained with a bag containing EUR 100,000, allegedly only one of the payments he received from a businessman.
Ljube Boskoski was Interior Minister during the 2001 conflict that killed hundreds of Macedonian security forces, ethnic Albanian insurgents and civilians. Known for theatrics and inflammatory statements during the fighting, he was charged with war crimes against ethnic Albanian civilians by the Hague Tribunal and also, on a separate count, of ordering the police killing of seven Pakistani and Indian migrants mistakenly identified as terrorists in 2002. He spent four years in detention in Croatia, where he holds dual citizenship, and in the Hague detention unit, and was eventually freed of the war crimes charges in 2008 for lack of evidence. Boskoski was also freed of the charged connected with the killing of the migrants.
He returned to Macedonia where he left the VMRO-DPMNE party and started United for Macedonia, a small nationalist party, mounting a failed Presidential campaign in 2009. After his arrest and sentencing to five years in prison, Boskoski faced additional charges, of ordering the murder of a man in 2001 in a case that involved alleged burning down of warehouses for insurance money and a team of Serbian hit men.
During the wiretapping affair in 2015, the opposition SDSM party distributed audio recordings, allegedly of top Government officials, discussing Boskoski's arrest. SDSM claims that the recordings, which are inadmissible as evidence because they were obtained illegally, show that Boskoski was arrested for political reasons. After this press conference, another recording was leaked, of a video showing him taking an envelope with money from a person speaking with a Greek accent. Boskoski and this person are seen on the tape as they discuss his 2011 political campaign, and Boskoski, while taking the money, promises to help resolve the name issue between Macedonia and Greece, if he is voted into office at the elections.