North Macedonia Deal to Revisit Ethnically Charged Cases Questioned

The issue of several ethnically charged court cases that has dogged multi-ethnic North Macedonia for years reemerged on Sunday, when the Prime Minister and Social Democratic leader, Zoran Zaev, signed a coalition deal with a small ethnic Albanian party to boost the government's slim majority.

Just as Zaev and Alternative party leader Aftim Gashi were signing the deal in Skopje, the Alternative party spokesperson, Orhan Murtezani, revealed that, under the deal, Zaev had agreed to an "international investigation" into the contested court cases, to resolve suspicions of "political influence".

The most notable cases include the 2012 murder of five ethnic Macedonians near the capital, Skopje, for which five ethnic Albanians were found guilty.

Another was a shootout in Kumanovo in May 2015 that left 18 people dead, including eight police officers, for which the surviving members of the armed group, all ethnic Albanians, were given long jail sentences.

Zaev on Sunday insisted that the agreement did not automatically mean more retrials in the cases.

The international investigation "was agreed because trust in the court system has been shaken for a long time. But this does not mean that someone will be able to annul court verdicts, or do something contrary to our laws", he said.

He said the plan was for the government to ask the European Commission to send a "team of independent experts" to carry out "international investigation of the processes, where there are suspicions that they were politically influenced".

Trials and retrials already done

Some legal experts and observers met this news with scepticism, however, asking why Zaev's government did not seek such an investigation previously, while the cases...