KILL PRESIDENT: Boris Trajkovski
Eight years after the death of Macedonian President Boris Tarjkovski, a new investigation is being opened in Macedonia into the circumstances under which the Beechcraft King Air B 200 plane, which the Macedonian President was traveling with his associates to a business forum in Mostar, crashed.
Officially, according to the report of BiH prosecutor Salko Bogić, the plane hit the Matića hill, in a place that was mined during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, between the towns of Huskovići and Rotimlja, 26 km south-southeast, in thick fog and heavy rain on February 2004, 08.00 at around 15:XNUMX a.m. from Mostar, it broke into three parts when it fell, and the accident was a consequence of bad weather and pilot error, because before hitting the mountain, the plane was constantly was off route.
Due to many unclear parts of that report, and above all due to the fact that the Bosnian and Macedonian authorities were not given full insight into the on-site investigation by SFOR, four years ago an inquiry commission was formed, including some foreign experts, with the task of investigating the causes of the accident.
NEW DETAILS: King Air B 200 Beechcraft Aircraft Parts
The Skopje newspaper "Nova Makedonija" quotes the announcement of the government of Nikola Gruevski, in which it is written that on Tuesday, February 27, late in the evening, that government made a decision to submit the commission's report on the accident with all new facts and evidence to the Macedonian Public Prosecutor's Office for investigation, and also Directorate for Civil Aviation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the request that it be reopened in the country where the original investigation was conducted. The conclusion of the Macedonian government will be sent to the Committee for Legal Affairs and Human Rights at the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, and the Swiss member of the European Parliament, Andreas Gross, who previously publicly doubted the findings of the original investigation. Macedonian public prosecutor Ljupco Švrgovski claims that he spoke with Gross, but that he did not offer any tangible evidence other than suspicions. In addition to Nova Macedonia, several Macedonian media are dealing with this topic: Dnevnik; Utrinski Vesnik; News; Channel 5; Sitel; Thelma; Alpha; MTV1; MIA; Macfax, but neither provides details on the content of the commission's findings.
Macedonian Interior Minister Gordana Jankulovska, who previously expressed doubts about the findings of the first investigation, said that the commission's report contains new information about the plane crash near Mostar, but that it should wait for the Macedonian Public Prosecutor's Office to conduct a new investigation.
The head of the Macedonian Public Prosecutor's Office, Ljupco Švrgovski, said that the material has not yet reached the prosecution, which needs time to check possible new evidence.
Doubts about the official findings about the cause of the crash of the Macedonian presidential plane were spread, by the way, immediately after the plane crash. The Washington Post writes that some pointed to the long time it took to find the remains of the plane in the hills near Mostar. Others questioned the air traffic control at Ortiješ Airport in Mostar, which was then manned by a French military crew. The Washington Post quotes Martin Martinoski, the spokesman for the Macedonian government, as saying that the BiH authorities have never conducted a serious investigation into the causes of the accident.
Nova Makedonija writes that after the publication of the official report on the crash of the government plane, aviation experts expressed their suspicion that mistakes were made during the investigation and that many questions were not answered, such as: what path the plane was on, whether the instruments were correct, why large parts of the report that could reveal whether there is responsibility of the aviation authorities in Macedonia were deleted; and that the attitude of the peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFOR) during the search for the bodies and for the plane that was found 24 hours after the crash was also questionable.
According to the Macedonian media, suspicion was also raised by the fact that the ILT device, which was supposed to show the location of the plane's crash, did not work for the whole day (according to the report of the Bosnian commission, it had problems with power supply due to disconnected batteries) - but the damaged instrument strangely revived the next day and gave the signal, only after the "kinger" and the victims were found.
The Washington Post and TV CBS news report that the document of the Macedonian government demands a further investigation into the accident itself, as well as into all the activities of the previous 26 hours, including the NATO activity in the wider area of Mostar.
The possibility that Boris Trajkovski is a victim of assassination was first mentioned in 2007 by Skopje lawyer Ignjat Pancevski, representative of the Trajkovski family, who believes that President Boris Trajkovski's plane was shot down. Aleksandar Trajkovski previously claimed that his twin brother Boris Trajkovski, the Macedonian president, was killed
A week before the government's conclusion on the Commission's report was published, Ignat Pančevski mentioned some more specific details that he claims are evidence in a statement to the Macedonian television Channel 5. He claims that he can prove that one of the seriously injured (both legs were broken) talked to his family on a mobile phone for more than half an hour, which refutes the thesis that the passengers of the presidential plane were killed during the plane crash. He claimed to have chemical analyzes that prove that some of the items were not burned with burning kerosene, but in another way. Radio "Slobodna Evropa" quotes the statements of lawyer Pancevski that among the evidence are the testimonies of locals in the area where the plane crashed, which differ from the official version. He also stated that there are sound recordings on which, at the moment when the plane fell, the voices of people congratulating each other for the successful downing of the plane can be heard in three world languages in mutual communication. He claimed that there is also some satellite video, although he did not describe it more precisely. In short, the lawyer claims that the Macedonian president's plane shot down a military plane and that the evidence is now in Skopje.
