North Macedonia Ex-PM Testifies at Ethnically-Charged Murder Trial

Zoran Zaev gave two-and-a-half hours of evidence on Monday at Skopje Criminal Court about wiretapped conversations between former high-ranking North Macedonian officials that relatives of the victims and the defendants had hoped would shed more light on the case.

But the testimony from the Social Democrats' leader brought little in terms of new revelations about the gruesome murders committed at Orthodox Easter near Skopje in 2012, for which six ethnic Albanians are being retried.

Five years ago, when he was an opposition leader, Zaev claimed that some of the thousands of illegal wiretaps of then top officials, which were in his possession at that time and are believed to have leaked from the country's secret services, might reveal the truth behind the killings.

But on Monday, testifying at the defendants' retrial, Zaev said that he did not get a complete picture about the case from the wiretaps to which he listened, and then, in late 2015, handed over to the Special Prosecution, which is now handling the retrial.

Goran Nakjevski, the father of one of the teenagers who were killed, asked Zaev why he did not publish any of the wiretaps concerning the case, as he once promised to do.

Zaev answered that he did not want "to cause possible harm and confusion in public about this case which drew enormous public interest", and because he did not want to publish possible evidence that might be procured as part of legal police surveillance measures, which would then make him accountable.

Zaev denied having direct evidence or knowledge about the possible involvement of former top officials in the case.

He said that from the wiretaps he had heard, former ruling party politicians apparently "were expressing interest" about the case,...

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