Sources in the Judicial Council told “Fokus” that to one of the key elements of the coalition agreement between Zoran Zaev and Afrim Gashi from the Alternative party could be problematic. Zaev and Gashi announced that they will invite international experts to examine several ethnically very divisive trials, including taking a third look at the trial over the 2012 Good Friday massacre of four ethnic Macedonian youngsters and one man carried out by ethnic Albanian islamists, the 2015 Albanian attack on the city of Kumanovo, and the 2015 killing of a young Albanian boy in an apparently deliberate car attack.

In a statement for the pro-Government “Fokus” outlet, unnamed sources in the Judicial Council said that there are legal conditions that need to be met before an already completed trial and a closed criminal case can be re-opened. In his remarks with Gashi, Zaev said that he will ask for EU “experts” who will review the cases and give their opinion.

One of these cases was already reopened, on direct request from Zoran Zaev. The initial trial for the Good Friday massacre ended with life prison sentences for the three Islamists who directly carried out the attack (two remain in hiding in Kosovo) and several of their accomplices. But in his push to rally ethnic Albanian voters behind his SDSM party, Zaev claimed that he has shocking wiretaps that will throw a completely new light on the case, and the court, under his influence, ordered a retrial in 2017. Years later, after ignoring desperate please from the families of the killed boys to reveal what he knows, Zaev finally testified and acknowledged that he never had any new evidence in the case – after which the key sentences were confirmed.

“Zaev needs to explain his comments about the Good Friday massacre”