Prosecutor v. Boškoski & Tarčulovski

From January to September 2001, government security forces for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) had increasingly frequent and serious armed clashes with individuals and groups from the Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA). The NLA was led by Ali Ahmeti, whose chain of command extended to 2,500 fighters, who split into four brigades. The NLA struggled with funding but generally supplied its fighters with weapons and equipment. The government considered NLA a serious threat and committed military and police forces to combatting it during this time period. Ultimately, the clashes in FYROM displaced about 134,000 civilians, with half becoming refugees. After the violence quieted down, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTFY) brought war-crimes charges against two FYROM government officials: (1) Johan Tarčulovski (defendant), for allegedly using government forces to commit atrocities against unarmed civilians, and (2) Ljube Boškoski (defendant), FYROM’s minister of the interior, for failing to prevent government forces from committing war crimes. Both men argued that they could not be guilty of war crimes because, legally, war crimes could occur only in the context of a war or armed conflict. The men argued that no armed conflict had existed and that the government was merely responding to terrorist attacks. Under this theory, any wrongdoing was governed by FYROM’s legal system and not the ICTFY. The ICTFY’s trial chamber held a trial to determine whether an armed conflict had existed.