In the trial in the gruesome killing of 14 year old Vanja Gjorcevska, the court today heard from several friends of main suspect Ljupco Palevski – Palco.

One of them, Stefan Dimkovski, who was active in Palevski’s fringe political party, said that he drove Palevski from Belgrade, where he was ostensibly having a medical treatment, to Turkey.

We had no problem at the border crossings. In Turkey, we went to an old house which Palevski said he rented for three months for 150 EUR. He told me that he plans to record podcasts there. Before I left back, he told me that there are some “happenings” with the missing girl in Skopje, and that there are attempts to pin the case on him, Dimkovski said.

Dimkovski added that he fainted from shock when he read the news sites that Palevski is suspected in the murder of Vanja Gjorcevska. “I called Palevski to ask what happened, and he told me that it’s all a big set-up, that the Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski is framing him, and that he may have to look for political asylum in Belarus”.

Another witness, Erol Osmani, said that he is friends with Palevski and that on the day after the murder he was looking for him, asking him to come do some repairs on his heating system. “He told me that he is sick, that he has a cold, but the next day he came, did the job and didn’t even ask for money. I did not notice anything different. His car had a dent on the driver’s side. I did not notice a gun on him, I’ve never seen him wear one”, Osmani told the court.