Skopje, Macedonia
Macedonia’s former interior minister had seven innocent men murdered in 2002, in an attempt to show that his country had a terrorism problem, the government said this week. At the time, some elements in the government wanted to portray Macedonia as a victim of Islamic terror, in order to gain favor with the U.S. and discredit the ethnic Albanian minority. The interior minister, Ljube Boskovski, allegedly ordered police to identify immigrants who could be portrayed as Islamic terrorists. A special forces unit kidnapped six Pakistanis and an Indian, killed them, and planted guns and Islamic paraphernalia on them. Boskovski then went on TV to warn that al Qaida was active in Macedonia and that Albanians sympathized with its cause. Boskovski, who was arrested this week, denied all charges.
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