Alleged War Crimes
Alleged war-crimes included the likes of a three-day operation by Macedonian police against the ethnic Albanian village of Ljuboten, from 10–12 August 2001, which left ten civilians dead and resulted in the arrest of more than 100 ethnic-Albanian men, many of whom were severely beaten and tortured while in police custody. According to the Macedonian government, there was an insurgent presence in the village; however, a Human Rights Watch investigation on the ground in Ljuboten found no direct evidence of this. These events led to the trial of the then-Macedonian Minister of Internal Affairs, Ljube Boškoski, in the International War Crime Tribunal in The Hague. He was acquitted in 2008, but his co-defendant Johan Tarculovski was found guilty; both verdicts were upheld in 2010.
The bombing of the 13th-century Orthodox monastery Sveti Atanasij in the village of Lesok is considered a war-crime by some. However, no one has ever claimed responsibility for the attack and Albanian guerrilla officials have desmised all responsibility and placed the blame on Macedonian special forces saying it was another poor attempt to link the NLA to Islamic extremism. However, upon closer inspection, it was discovered that near the rubble that had once been one of the most revered religious sites for the Macedonian Orthodox Church, there lay a dead donkey, its bloated body daubed with red paint: spelling out the letters UÇK, the Albanian abbreviation for the rebel National Liberation Army. This incident is to this day disputed and the monastery is now under-going reconstruction. On the other hand, the Macedonian forces themselves destroyed a mosque in the village of Neprosteno. The mosque was rebuilt in 2003 with funding from the EU.
The monastery at Matejce, near Kumanovo, was also damaged in the fighting and the church of St. Virgin Hodegetria was vandalized by the Albanian insurgentx who spray-painted and carved anti-Christian and Albanian-nationalist symbols into the church's 14th-century frescoes. Similar attacks were carried out against Serb churches and monasteries in Kosovo by ethnic-Albanians.
The Macedonian government also claimed the so-called Vejce massacre, in which Albanian insurgents ambushed and killed 8 Macedonian soldiers, to be a war crime. According to these claims, soldiers captured by the insurgents were, executed, mutilated, and burned. The claims were not verified by international observers, and to this day, the bodies have not been released to the public or to civilian investigators and autopsies were carried out in a military morgue. But news of the deaths sparked local riots against ethnic-Albanians in several towns and cities across Macedonia, and such revolts included burning and vandalising shops and Mosques.
Read more about this topic: Insurgency In The Republic Of Macedonia
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