Man Held After Three Die in Skopje Machine Gun Attack

A 47-year-old businessman was detained by police shortly after the three were shot in a burst of automatic rifle fire as they sat at a table in the Big Fish' restaurant in the Tri Biseri shopping mall at 7:45pm.

Police said on Friday that Vlado Milosev, 35, employed in the Ministry of Interior as a security guard,  Vlatko Andreev, 26, and 28- year-old Jordan Jordanov, who used the nickname 'Rkul' and was a known criminal, died on Thursday night.

Milosev is believed to have been a security guard for Macedonian PM Nikola Gruevski and a close relative to the PM’s chief of security, Dejan Mitrovski-Urko, sources told Balkan Insight.

Jordanov was on parole after being jailed last year for the illegal possession of firearms following a joint drug-ring busting mission by the Macedonian and Austrian police dubbed "Operation Vienna", local media A1 and Alfa TV reported.

At a press conference on Friday, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski refused to comment on the case.

Asked by a journalist at the conference why a police employee would be sitting at the same table as known criminals, Police Minister Gordana Jankulovskia replied: “The police are investigating to further determine all the details."

The police said all the victims were from the central Macedonian town of Veles.

One was killed instantly and the other two died later in hospital.
Rexhep Selmani, the head of the  Skopje Clinical Centre, said on Friday: "Two people were brought in last night.

"One of them died right away while the other one died on an operating table. He had gunshot wounds in the head and in the chests.”

Police said preliminary findings suggest the suspect had borrowed money from the men and was under pressure to return it along with high interest rates.

Faced with threats if he did not return the cash, the suspect is believed to have taken a gun and shot them, they said.