A book published by former Parliament Speaker Stojan Andov was banned by the court today. According to the Civic Court in Skopje, the book titled “Up to the assassination and beyond”, written by Andov to clarify the events surrounding the 1995 attempted car bomb attack on then President Kiro Gligorov, will have to be withdrawn from circulation.

Andov leveled serious allegations against then Interior Minister Ljubomir Frckoski, who left his position and sought the Foreign Affairs department shortly after the assassination attempt. In the book, Andov described how Frckoski was absent from the hospital where the leaders of the country gathered anxiously awaiting news about the badly wounded President. According to Andov, Frckoski opted to leave for a border town and this all rang very suspicious to all present.

Gligorov himself accused Frckoski of attempting to bribe him, with money offered through Greek intermediaries, in exchange for a favorable solution to the Macedonian name issue. In his own memoirs, Gligorov described how Frckoski brought a suitcase full of money to him, and offered him rare antiques from Greece to get him to back down on his positions defending Macedonian national interest.
Frckoski sued Andov for slander, and his wife Irena Frckoska, representing him in court, won an order to ban the sale of Andov’s book. According to the unprecedented court order, all book stores and publishers are ordered to stop printing and selling Andov’s book.

Despite the long lingering allegations of various criminal conduct, and the decision by the Lustration Commission to reveal Frckoski’s abuse of human rights as Interior Minister, the now ruling SDSM party nominated him as its presidential candidate in the 2009 elections. Following this defeat, Frckoski remained as an influential adviser in SDSM and was supportive of this party’s push to rename and redefine Macedonia with the Prespa treaty.