Hundreds of ethnic Albanian protesters chanted nationalist slogans and threats aimed at officials of Zaev’s judiciary during a protest today against the sentencing of the group of Islamists who carried out the 2012 Good Friday massacre.

The protests started in Skopje’s Cair district, after the Friday prayers, and continued to the main courthouse and the Government building. The protesters carried Albanian flags and chanted in support of the UCK/NLA terrorist organization that started the 2001 civil war in Macedonia. 

Protest organizers insist that the ethnic Albanian Islamists, who were given life sentences although two of the three shooters fled the country, are not guilty of the murder of four ethnic Macedonian boys and one man. They cite claims to that effect made by Prime Minister Zoran Zaev himself, during his 2015 Colored Revolution campaign. Zaev used the claims to malign the then ruling VMRO-DPMNE party and make it more difficult for it to form a coalition with Albanian parties. Once he was in power, Zaev acknowledged that he doesn’t actually have any new evidence that would throw different light on the case.