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Macedonia Drops Charges in NATO Killings Case
Due to lack of evidence, Macedonia’s Special Prosecution, dropped all charges against ethnic Albanian villagers accused of planting a mine that killed two NATO soldiers in 2003, ending their long judicial ordeal.
Macedonia’s Special Prosecution said on Monday that it is dropping all charges against 11 ethnic Albanian residents of the north-eastern village of Sopot who were being retried for allegedly planting a mine in 2003 that killed two Polish NATO soldiers and one Macedonian civilian.
“After a complete analysis… we determined it would be fair to drop the charges today due to lack of evidence,” Chief Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva told media in front of Skopje Criminal Court.
Janeva explained that the Special Prosecution determined that the entire case, one of the longest in Macedonia’s judicial history, had been based on a single witness, Ramadan Bajrami, who had been forced by the authorities to give his testimony.
Her explanation chimes with what the defence lawyers have been claiming all along.
“We have been insisting that the people are innocent for 14 years,” one of the defence lawyers told media.
Janeva however added that the Special Prosecution is not planning to completely close the case and it now has another theory about the incident which it plan to investigate further.
The defence said it will demand reparations for its clients who have spent many years in jail and in the courts.
The mine explosion in Sopot happened in 2003 when Macedonia was still recovering from the 2001 armed conflict between ethnic Albanian insurgents and the security forces.
After a prolonged trial, the 12 defendants were originally sentenced in March 2010 to a total of 150 years in jail, but after Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian political parties complained, a parliamentary commission decided that there were some omissions during the trial.
The parliamentary commission's decision rested on a claim by one of the defendants, Ramadan Bajrami, that he confessed after being tortured by police.
This resulted in the court ordering a new trial, which was originally supposed to start in 2011.
By 2016, one of the original 12 defendants had died.
The country’s ethnic Albanian political parties have criticised the Sopot case and several others as examples of injustice against Albanians in Macedonia.
The*Special Prosecution took over the case from the regular prosecution*in July last year based on the fact that it was mentioned by top officials in illegal wiretaps that it was tasked with investigating.
The Special Prosecution was set up in 2015 to investigate alleged high-level crimes which came to light in the wiretapped conversations which were released by the then opposition Social Democrats earlier that year.
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Good to see justice finally being served... and these innocent people can be free... why would Albanians have planted a mine that would kill NATO soldiers when 3 years prior NATO bombed Milosevics Serbia and Albanians are the most pro NATO/EU/USA people in europe..
The question now remains... why and who really planded the bomb? . who organised a forced witness who was threatened to give a false statement (which he later retracted) .. how was the state involved? Who organised the whole event and cover-up? Were there foreign players involved?
Due to lack of evidence, Macedonia’s Special Prosecution, dropped all charges against ethnic Albanian villagers accused of planting a mine that killed two NATO soldiers in 2003, ending their long judicial ordeal.
Macedonia’s Special Prosecution said on Monday that it is dropping all charges against 11 ethnic Albanian residents of the north-eastern village of Sopot who were being retried for allegedly planting a mine in 2003 that killed two Polish NATO soldiers and one Macedonian civilian.
“After a complete analysis… we determined it would be fair to drop the charges today due to lack of evidence,” Chief Special Prosecutor Katica Janeva told media in front of Skopje Criminal Court.
Janeva explained that the Special Prosecution determined that the entire case, one of the longest in Macedonia’s judicial history, had been based on a single witness, Ramadan Bajrami, who had been forced by the authorities to give his testimony.
Her explanation chimes with what the defence lawyers have been claiming all along.
“We have been insisting that the people are innocent for 14 years,” one of the defence lawyers told media.
Janeva however added that the Special Prosecution is not planning to completely close the case and it now has another theory about the incident which it plan to investigate further.
The defence said it will demand reparations for its clients who have spent many years in jail and in the courts.
The mine explosion in Sopot happened in 2003 when Macedonia was still recovering from the 2001 armed conflict between ethnic Albanian insurgents and the security forces.
After a prolonged trial, the 12 defendants were originally sentenced in March 2010 to a total of 150 years in jail, but after Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian political parties complained, a parliamentary commission decided that there were some omissions during the trial.
The parliamentary commission's decision rested on a claim by one of the defendants, Ramadan Bajrami, that he confessed after being tortured by police.
This resulted in the court ordering a new trial, which was originally supposed to start in 2011.
By 2016, one of the original 12 defendants had died.
The country’s ethnic Albanian political parties have criticised the Sopot case and several others as examples of injustice against Albanians in Macedonia.
The*Special Prosecution took over the case from the regular prosecution*in July last year based on the fact that it was mentioned by top officials in illegal wiretaps that it was tasked with investigating.
The Special Prosecution was set up in 2015 to investigate alleged high-level crimes which came to light in the wiretapped conversations which were released by the then opposition Social Democrats earlier that year.
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Good to see justice finally being served... and these innocent people can be free... why would Albanians have planted a mine that would kill NATO soldiers when 3 years prior NATO bombed Milosevics Serbia and Albanians are the most pro NATO/EU/USA people in europe..
The question now remains... why and who really planded the bomb? . who organised a forced witness who was threatened to give a false statement (which he later retracted) .. how was the state involved? Who organised the whole event and cover-up? Were there foreign players involved?
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