Ljuboten attack no international war crime, defence argues

Oct 29, 2009, 10:36 GMT

The Hague - The police attack on a Macedonian village did not constitute a war crime and should not be dealt with by international law, defence counsel for Johan Tarculovski argued at the Hague-based international war crimes tribunal on Thursday.

Tarculovski, 34, a former police official in the president's security unit of the interior ministry of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), appealed his 12-year sentence the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) had handed in July 2008.

The trial chamber convicted Tarculovski for murder, wanton destruction of cities and villages and customs of war, including the 2001 attack on the agricultural village of Ljuboten that left 14 civilians dead. Tarculovski was found to have led the attack.

'This is a case without direct evidence of a war crime,' Alan Dershowitz, Tarculovski's defence counsel, told the appeals chamber judges.

'This is not the kind of war crime that should be governed by international law, he said.

Emphasizing that Tarculovksi was the 'only man in prison' as a result of the Macedonian conflict, Dershowitz called the attack on Ljuboten 'a small incident that does not constitute a war crime.

'It was a crime that should be punished in Macedonia. It should be investigated locally,' Dershowitz argued.

Whereas Tarculovski, who pleaded not guilty to all charges in April 2005, was convicted in 2008, the ICTY acquitted his superior, Ljube Boskosi.

Boskosi was at the time FYROM's interior affairs minister. The court found it could not be established that Boskosi, who had been charged with 'superior responsibility for the criminal acts of his subsordinates,' had been involved or was even aware of the police attack on Ljuboten.

The appeal against Boskosi's acquittal, filed by the prosecution in August 2008, is also to be heard on Thursday.