The Skopje Criminal Court rejected defense demands to order a reconstruction of the 2012 Good Friday massacre. The court is nearing on a second sentencing for the group of Albanian Islamists who killed four Christian Macedonian boys and a man, in an apparent attempt to spark a religious war.

The case was scandalously set for a retrial, after Zoran Zaev insisted that he has new evidence in the massacre, at a time when he needed the support of the ethnic Albanian parties to form a Government. Zaev was openly accusing the then ruling VMRO-DPMNE party of somehow staging the massacre, but once he grabbed power, Zaev confessed that he has no new evidence in the trial.

Faced with the coming sentencing, defense attorney Naser Raufi now demands a new reconstruction in the massacre, but the court denied this, stating that too much time has gone since the killings. The closing of the trial caused the remaining defendants – those who haven’t fled the country yet – to become nervous. One of the three suspected direct perpetrators of the massacre, Agim Ismailovic, fled from the court last month, but was re-arrested.