A court in Macedonia on Friday sentenced an eighth ethnic Albanian man to life in prison over a 2015 shootout with police that left 18 people dead, as Kosovo citizens protested against the verdicts.
Macedonian citizen Sulejman Osmani was jailed a day after the court in Skopje handed out sentences to 33 men, including seven for life, for involvement in the murky clashes in the ethnically-mixed northern town of Kumanovo, near the Kosovo border.
The two-day shootout in May 2015 left eight police officers and 10 gunmen dead, as well as dozens injured -- the worst unrest in Macedonia since an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001, which ended with a deal providing greater rights for the minority.
The convicted men, ethnic Albanians mostly from Macedonia and Kosovo, were found guilty of being part of or aiding an armed group that attacked the police in Kumanovo with weapons stolen from another police station a month earlier.
Four suspected accomplices to the shootout were acquitted.
Osmani, sentenced Friday, was tried separately following his extradition from neighbouring Kosovo.
Kosovo's Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj called Friday for an "international inquiry" into the incident, as around 200 people protested against the verdicts by marching from downtown Pristina towards the Macedonian embassy.
Access to the embassy was however blocked by police, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.
The protesters carried Albanian flags and chanted "KLA" in reference to the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian rebel force that fought Serb troops in the late 1990s.
Eight of the gunmen killed in the Macedonian shootout were KLA veterans whose funerals in Albanian-majority Kosovo drew thousands of mourners.
Macedonia condemned the burning of its national flag in two cities in Kosovo in reaction to the court judgements, after football fans in the eastern city of Gjilan posted footage of their flag-burning on social media.
The 2015 shootout took place at a time of political turmoil in Macedonia, with mass rival protests in the capital Skopje after the government of conservative premier Nikola Gruevski -- since ousted -- was accused of mass wire-tapping.
Some ethnic Albanians and political opponents suspected Gruevski's government of having a hand in the unrest to divert attention from the political crisis, which it strongly denied.
Defence lawyer Naser Raufi on Thursday also called for an independent investigation, alleging that the case was "orchestrated by secret services".
Ethnic Albanians make up around a quarter of Macedonia's two million people.
jmi-ih-mat-rob/dcr
A court in Macedonia on Friday sentenced an eighth ethnic Albanian man to life in prison over a 2015 shootout with police that left 18 people dead, as Kosovo citizens protested against the verdicts.
Macedonian citizen Sulejman Osmani was jailed a day after the court in Skopje handed out sentences to 33 men, including seven for life, for involvement in the murky clashes in the ethnically-mixed northern town of Kumanovo, near the Kosovo border.
The two-day shootout in May 2015 left eight police officers and 10 gunmen dead, as well as dozens injured — the worst unrest in Macedonia since an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001, which ended with a deal providing greater rights for the minority.
The convicted men, ethnic Albanians mostly from Macedonia and Kosovo, were found guilty of being part of or aiding an armed group that attacked the police in Kumanovo with weapons stolen from another police station a month earlier.
Four suspected accomplices to the shootout were acquitted.
Osmani, sentenced Friday, was tried separately following his extradition from neighbouring Kosovo.
Kosovo’s Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj called Friday for an “international inquiry” into the incident, as around 200 people protested against the verdicts by marching from downtown Pristina towards the Macedonian embassy.
Access to the embassy was however blocked by police, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.
The protesters carried Albanian flags and chanted “KLA” in reference to the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian rebel force that fought Serb troops in the late 1990s.
Eight of the gunmen killed in the Macedonian shootout were KLA veterans whose funerals in Albanian-majority Kosovo drew thousands of mourners.
Macedonia condemned the burning of its national flag in two cities in Kosovo in reaction to the court judgements, after football fans in the eastern city of Gjilan posted footage of their flag-burning on social media.
The 2015 shootout took place at a time of political turmoil in Macedonia, with mass rival protests in the capital Skopje after the government of conservative premier Nikola Gruevski — since ousted — was accused of mass wire-tapping.
Some ethnic Albanians and political opponents suspected Gruevski’s government of having a hand in the unrest to divert attention from the political crisis, which it strongly denied.
Defence lawyer Naser Raufi on Thursday also called for an independent investigation, alleging that the case was “orchestrated by secret services”.
Ethnic Albanians make up around a quarter of Macedonia’s two million people.
jmi-ih-mat-rob/dcr
