I have learned that the government wants to take my freedom away using undemocratic steps and methods and abusing the prosecutorial and judicial system in Macedonia,” Nikola Gruevski said on Facebook after Hungary reportedly granted asylum to the former prime minister who fled to Budapest after being sentenced to prison for abuse of power. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has prided himself on making his country one of the hardest places in Europe in which to claim asylum, and he has plastered cities with billboards emphasising that migrants and refugees are not welcome. "Today The Republic of Hungary, an EU and NATO member state, responded positively to my previously submitted request to obtain political asylum due to political persecution in the Republic of Macedonia," Gruevski wrote on his Facebook page. "We expect that the authorities in Budapest unconditionally accept the extradition request," they said.
Nikola Gruevski, former Prime Minister of Macedonia, says he is granted political asylum in Hungary after he fled his home country last week to avoid a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence for corruption.