Macedonia decided to abandon four war-crimes cases related to the 2001 conflict

After a day-long discussion, Macedonia’s ruling coalition voted on Tuesday to abandon four war-crimes cases related to the 2001 conflict.

This means that prosecutors will now have to close the books on the cases, which the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, returned to Macedonian courts in 2008.

The cases involve alleged crimes by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, some of whom now hold senior posts in the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, a partner party to Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s governing VMRO-DPMNE.