Prosecutor Ana Stojkovic Dimitrievska stated on Wednesday that the Prosecutor’s Office would appeal the acquittal of Aleksandar Gjorcevski in the trial over the 2023 double kidnapping and murder of Vanja Gjorcevska and Pance Zezovski.
According to her, had information not come from Gjorcevski (the girl’s father), the crimes wouldn’t have been committed.
“It’s an undisputed fact regarding this defendant that only the parents knew the child would go to school on her own. Two of the defendants testified that precisely the father had shared that information, through Palevski. Without that information, there wouldn’t have been kidnapping and the consecutive outcome. The Office wasn’t able to get over that fact”, she noted.
On the other hand, Gjorcevski’s attorney, Vladimir Tufegdzic, said there was no room for winning euphoria considering the Court’s decision.
“This decision, in its essence, is empty because we have failed to get the answers as to why this child was kidnapped and killed. We haven’t gotten an answer as to why there was an insistence, at all costs, on Aleksandar being part of this process even though it had been known from the first moment that there was no evidence”, he stated.
Regarding the kidnapping of Zezovski, the four other defendants, Ljupco Palevski, Bore Videvski, Vlatko Kesisev, and Velibor Manev, were found not guilty. Regarding the other parts of the verdict, it was announced appeals would be filed.
“This circus has ended in the same way it started, without any evidence from the Prosecutor’s Office. The Criminal Court read the verdict on the basis of what’s written in the bill of indictment”, Palevski’s attorney, Jovica Stresevski, noted.
Videvski’s attorney, Manev, asked how it was possible for the defendants to have killed Zezovski if they hadn’t kidnapped him. Kesisev’s attorney, Efremov, said he would appeal because the Court had failed to consider alleviating circumstances.
According to him, if it hadn’t been for his client, the bodies wouldn’t have been found, nor would the way in which the act of kidnappings had been committed would have been determined. The Court, Efremov said, didn’t show enough faith in Kesisev’s testimony that he’d acted out of fear and upon orders from Palevski.