U.N. Court Issues Final Balkans Indictment

The U.N. tribunal for war crimes in the Balkans unsealed its final indictment Tuesday, charging Macedonia’s former interior minister and a top police officer with the torture and deaths of ethnic Albanians.

Ljube Boskovski, 44, the former minister, and Johan Tarculovsky, 30, a senior police officer, were each charged with three counts of murder, cruel treatment and wanton destruction in connection with an August 2001 raid on the village of Ljuboten.

Boskovski, currently held in Croatia on unrelated charges, has denied the allegations. Tarculovsky, who is in detention in Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Prosecution spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said that though the indictments were the last the tribunal would issue for crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, the U.N. court would not close until the top three of 17 remaining fugitives were caught. They are Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic, and Croatian Gen. Ante Gotovina.

Chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte is under pressure from the major powers who backed the tribunal to finish trials by 2008 and close the court by the end of 2010.