Acquittal Dismays Macedonian Government

Macedonia's state prosecutor said he would appeal against the decision by the Skopje district court last week to acquit three former police officials and a businessman of the murder of seven Asians in 2002.

The court released the policemen, Goran Stojkov, Aleksandar Cvetkov, Boban Utkovski and the businessman, Jovan Kikerekov, for lack of evidence. They were released immediately following 11 months in detention.

The judge did not release an official explanation of the verdict, using the legal time limit of two weeks to delay doing so.

But many experts warned it was unlikely to mark the ending of the Rastanski lozja saga, which has damaged Macedonia's international standing.

It is still widely believed that the seven slain men were economic migrants who were killed in a staged ambush in order to portray Macedonia as an ally of the US-led "war on terrorism".

Legal analysts say the five-month trial did not provide any answers to key questions concerning what happened at Rastanski lozja vineyard, near Skopje, on March 2 2002.

Branko Trickovski, editor of the daily Utrinski vesnik, said the verdict had not cleared Macedonia's now sullied reputation.

"The decision to acquit the defendants because of insufficient evidence does not explain what really happened at Rastanski lozja," he told IWPR.

"Macedonia's international image is still stained by this case, as the security forces remain accused of having staged the murder of civilians," he added.

Mersal Biljali, a political analyst, was more cautious in his response to the court's verdict.

"It is good the case was finally taken out of a drawer and put before the courts," he said. "If this had not happened, there would have been negative consequences for our image in the international community.

"It remains to be seen what will happen when the case reaches higher judicial levels."

The prosecution maintained that the seven Asians - six Pakistani nationals and one unidentified citizen - were migrants searching for work when the Macedonian police picked them up on the Bulgarian border.

It said the men were then detained in Skopje for a while before the police killed them in a staged raid on the outskirts of the capital.

At the time, the police minister, Ljube Boskovski, now in The Hague on charges not related to this case, claimed the men were Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda cells planning attacks on the US, British and German embassies in Skopje.

The story backfired almost immediately, as foreign embassies denied receiving any information about such attacks and diplomats openly voiced suspicions over the police version of events.

Instead of winning international support for its vigilance, Skopje promptly came under strong pressure to investigate and clear up the affair.

But during the trial, defence lawyers for the four suspects continued to insist that the slain men were, in fact, terrorists.

As the court did not determine this, lawyers predicted that the Rastanski lozja case would probably continue.

Nikola Tupancevski, professor of law at Skopje University, said the case could not rest until the courts "answer the key questions: who killed these men, what were their motives and were they migrants - or did they really plan terrorist attacks?"

Tupancevski said the prosecution had been at fault for not providing enough evidence to support its demand for a conviction.

Gordan Kalajdziev, another law professor, agreed. "There is still a lot of work for the investigation and the judiciary to do," he said.

"Apart from appealing, the prosecution could obtain new evidence and so re-start the whole trial from the beginning."

Kalajdziev told IWPR it remained open to the families of the seven men to launch private prosecutions in the Macedonian courts.

Mirjana Najcevska, president of the Macedonia Helsinki Committee for Human rights, said the case deserved real closure.

"We have seven people dead and we must find about the circumstances of their death," Najcevska said. The case might end up in the supreme court, she speculated.

Apart from its legal ramifications, the April 22 court ruling carried serious political implications for the government, in the opinion of most analysts.

The judgment was widely seen as dealing a blow to the center-left government, which had accused the four men of plotting to kill the Asians.

It has increased tensions within the coalition, with the Liberal Democratic Party, LDP, the junior partner in government, demanding stronger action over the case from their senor partners, the Social Democratic Party, SDSM, saying the case had undermined government credibility.

At the same time, the ruling delighted right-wing nationalist supporters of Boskovski, who was charged with masterminding the killings in May 2004.

To avoid arrest, Boskovski, who holds dual citizenship, fled to Croatia. There, however, he was arrested and was charged with the murders. Boskovski was subsequently extradited from Croatia to the Hague tribunal to face war crimes charges.

Gjuner Ismail, director of Forum magazine, told IWPR the court decision would strengthen the hand of nationalists who wanted to keep alive simmering ethnic tensions left over from the conflict of 2001.

"This decision will strengthen the right-wing movement in the country," predicted Ismail.

Mitko Jovanov is a journalist with the daily Dnevnik.