Jailed Macedonian Minister Seeks Lie Detector Test

Ljube Boskoski was a sharp critic of the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s party | Photo by: OM

Ljube Boskoski has demanded a lie detector test to prove his innocence of charges that he ordered the murder of Marjan Tusevski.

A figure from the Skopje underworld, he was killed together with his driver, Kiril Janev, in 2001 when Boskovski was Interior Minister.

At a hearing on Monday that formally concluded the investigation, Boskoski maintained his innocence.

“Boskoski denied all charges… and requested a polygraph test... and he requested the same for the witnesses who say that he ordered the murder,” Boskoski’s lawyer, Vladimir Rakocevic, told Balkan Insight.

Boskoski, who still leads the opposition United for Macedonia party, was arrested in 2011, and is serving a seven-year sentence in a prison in Skopje for having financed his election campaign that year illegally.

Boskoski’s defence claims that he is being framed for his strong criticism of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski during the 2011 election campaign.

A source from the Skopje Criminal Court said that it is now up to the prosecution to decide whether to press charges and against whom.

Bosnkoski’s defence says that the prosecution has only verbal accounts from a protected witness who is considered crucial to the case.

The prosecution suspects a total of 15 people over the unresolved murder, many of whom are former police officials arrested in July. It believes that three Serbian nationals, all at large, did the actual killing.

Balkan Insight has obtained the statement of one witness in the case who says he helped the three Serbs flee the country.

“They came to my house near the border between Macedonia and Serbia. They told me to get rid of the [murder] weapon and transport them to Serbia through secret illegal routes. 

"I transported them over the border but did not ditch the weapon. Instead I hid it in the barn where the police later found it,” the witness wrote.

The witness did not explain who ordered the murder in the statement. He wrote that he often helped criminals to cross the border illegally.

Boskoski, who also has Croatian citizenship, is also being prosecuted in Pula, Croatia, for the killings of several Pakistani migrants that took place in Macedonia when he was Interior Minister. The trial in Pula should take place in October and November.

Boskoski was earlier prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, for breaking international humanitarian law in the 2001 conflict in Macedonia. But after four years in detention he was acquitted.