Families of the group of Islamists who carried out to 2012 Good Friday massacre are staging a protest in downtown Skopje today. Albanian activists are expected to join the protest and block traffic for sevarl hours around the main courthouse and the office of state prosecutors.

The protest comes as sentencing in the retrial of the Islamists draws near. Two of the three killers who shot for Macedonian Christian boys and one man with the apparent intent to spark a religious war had fled the country days after the massacre and after spending years in prison in Kosovo are now missing.

The third, with several accomplices, were sentenced to life in prison, but released with the help of Zoran Zaev, who loudly insisted that he has new evidence in the case. Zaev used the allegations to grab power, as it helped him win support from ethnic Albanian parties and voters, only to admit later that he has no new evidence.