Fugitives

The trial has started in Skopje of those charged with organising a mob assault on parliament in North Macedonia in April 2017, aimed at preventing the then opposition Social Democrats from taking power.

Dealing a death blow to a trial of the fugitive former prime minister, Nikola Gruevski, the main judge in the case codenamed TNT, Ognen Stavrev, on Monday said jury member Lijana Ivanovska Kockovska had resigned, rendering the entire process null and void.

Stavrev scheduled a new start for the trial on Tuesday, warning defence lawyers not to try to stall the case any further.

The former speaker of parliament in North Macedonia, Trajko Veljanoski, faces trial together with former transport minister Mile Janakieski, former education minister Spiro Risteski and former secret police chief Vladimir Atanasovski, after the Skopje Criminal Court on Thursday said it had accepted the charges pressed against them.

The high-profile trial in which former premier Nikola Gruevski is accused of ordering a political opponent's building to be demolished out of revenge may have to start all over again next year as the court failed to wrap it up by Tuesday before one of the judges retires, possibly rendering the entire process so far null and void.

About 2,000 websites in Georgia, including those of the president, the courts and the media, are at the center of a major cyberattack, BGNES reported.

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili's website was "attacked by hackers this afternoon," her AFP spokeswoman said. "Law enforcement is investigating the incident".

The private national TV station 1TV ceased airing its signal on Wednesday, unofficially due to major financial problems that have piled up since its informal chief, Bojan Jovanovski, known by the stage name Boki 13, was arrested late in July.

The TV station's main entrance on Friday was padlocked and its frequency blank, although its web page stayed active.

Journalist Tomislav Kezarovski expressed unhappiness on Tuesday at the decision by the prosecution, saying that he had been denied the chance to overturn his conviction at a retrial.

"I want a chance to prove my innocence and be acquitted by the court," Kezarovski told a hearing in Skopje on Tuesday.

The main opposition party in North Macedonia has used publication of video footage that may further implicate the embattled head of the Special Prosecution, Katica Janeva, to demand early elections.

Katica Janeva, head of the Special Prosecution in North Macedonia, SJO, the body that has spearheaded the fight against high-level crime in the country, submitted her irrevocable resignation on Monday.

A court in Hungary has rejected a demand from North Macedonia for former prime minister Nikola Gruevski to be extradited to start serving his two-year prison sentence for illegally soliciting the secret purchase of a 580,000-euro Mercedes in 2012.