The former Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski receives asylum in Hungary. This reported the online edition of the government newspaper "Magyar Idök". The Hungarian Immigration Office, which ruled Gruevski's request, had found that his fears that his life was in danger in Macedonia were justified.
The former nationalist leader was sentenced to a two-year prison sentence for corruption in his homeland. Further cases of abuse of office in his reign from 2006 to 2016 are pending against him.
A week ago, Gruevski fled to Hungary - just before he should have taken his prison sentence. He was assisted by Hungarian diplomats who drove him in their vehicles from Albania via Montenegro and Serbia to Hungary.
There he had filed an application for asylum on Tuesday a week ago. According to Magyar Idök, the Hungarian immigration office followed Gruevski's argument that "the government (in Macedonia) ... wants to restrict and lift the personal freedom of the former prime minister with non-democratic steps".
Macedonia aims to extradite the justice refugee. With the positive Budapest Asylum decision that has become very unlikely according to observers. The unusual agility of the procedure also seems to indicate that Gruevski is under the express protection of the National Liberal Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, with whom he has a long-standing friendship.