Police accused the former interior minister on Saturday of masterminding the slaying of seven accused terrorists who were in fact innocent Pakistani illegal immigrants in a plot staged to show Macedonia's support for the US-led war on terrorism.
The former head of the police, Ljube Boskovski, is suspected of ordering the execution of the seven men two years ago after publicly claiming they were a terrorist group which planned to attack foreign embassies in Macedonia, police spokeswoman Mirjana Konteska said.
"We believe that Boskovski played the crucial role in this," Konteska said.
Boskovski's three top associates, as well as a businessman and two special police commandos, were also accused by police. The police charges are a first step in a legal process likely to lead to an official indictment and a trial. If found guilty, they could face life in prison.
Macedonia acknowledged on Friday that the alleged action against Pakistani terrorists in March, 2002, was in fact an execution of innocent illegal immigrants as part of a meticulous plot meant to promote the Balkan country as a player in the war against terrorism.
The proceedings against Boskovski were made possible after a parliamentary committee stripped him of the immunity from prosecution he enjoyed as a legislator in the Balkan republic's assembly. Boskovski's lawyers claimed on Saturday, however, that the entire parliament must vote to strip him of his immunity in order for the decision to become valid.
Protesting what his lawyers described as procedural irregularities, Boskovski also refused on Saturday to appear before an investigative judge hearing the case. Under Macedonia's law, that refusal alone could lead to his detention.
"Our client is not a criminal and a monster," said one of his lawyers, Stavre Dzikov. "A person's dignity should be respected."
Boskovski, who was appointed interior minister under a previous nationalist government, was also the police chief during Macedonia's six-month ethnic conflict in 2001, which erupted after ethnic Albanian rebels took up arms to fight for more rights. Boskovski's special troops were accused of brutality during the clashes and he was reportedly under investigation by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
Senior police officials had said the seven Pakistanis were killed after a police patrol was ambushed. But Konteska said top police officials made up the plan to set up the Pakistanis and kill them in February, 2002, and that the men were brought to Macedonia from neighboring Bulgaria and then brutally gunned down outside the capital, Skopje.
After the slaying, authorities also displayed uniforms and badges bearing the insignia of the National Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian rebel force that fought government troops -- and alleged that the items were found in the raid.
Ethnic Albanian politicians denied any connection to the men and rejected the suggestion that the rebels had links to militant groups planning terrorist attacks.
Boskovski used the deaths of the Pakistanis to suggest that the rebels sympathized with militant groups, said Ermira Mehmeti, the spokeswoman for the Democratic Union for Integration, a party led by a former rebel commander.
"[Boskovski] presented them as mujahidin who fought for the NLA in order to prove a link of the NLA with ... al-Qaeda and [Osama] Bin Laden,'' she said.
A US State Department official said on condition of anonymity that the US had pressed for an inquiry and was pleased there would finally be one.
Since breaking away from Yugoslavia in 1991, Macedonia has been eager to win US political and economic support in efforts to join Western organizations. It has staunchly supported the US-led war on terrorism and has sent troops to Iraq.
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