Macedonian former interior minister Ljube Boskovski on Friday pleaded not guilty at the United Nations war crimes court in The Hague and called the charges against him an "attack" on his country. "I am not on trial," said Boskovski, 44. "The Republic of Macedonia is." Boskovski, charged in connection with the killing of seven ethnic Albanians in Macedonia in 2001, said the accusations were based not on evidence but on a copy of a report from New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). The tribunal indicted the former minister for an attack by Macedonian police on the village of Ljuboten near Skopje in August 2001. Seven ethnic Albanians were killed in the attack, a further 100 detained and abused, and some 30 houses burned or damaged. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has charged the former minister with not taking action to prevent the attack, which occurred just before the Albanian rebellion in the country ended. Johan Tarculovski, a former bodyguard of Boskovski and the commander of the police unit which carried out the attack, is also on trial in The Hague. The two are the only Macedonians to be indicted by the ICTY. Boskovski, who has dual Macedonian and Croatian citizenship, had been in custody in Croatia since August 2004, charged in connection with the murder of seven Asian migrant workers on the Macedonian border in 2002. --SP 2316 Local Time 2016 GMT
