Defense lawyers on Wednesday are set to present their closing arguments at a hearing at the Skopje Criminal Court of the so called Monster trial involving the killings of five men on April 12, 2021 near Smilkovo Lake in Skopje.

During the prosecution’s closing arguments presented at a hearing last month, prosecutor Fatime Fetai demanded that the defendants Halil Demiri and the brothers Afrim and Agim Ismailovikj should be sentenced to life imprisonment on terrorism charges for committing the killings in 2012. Fetai asked the court to find Fejzi Aziri guilty on two counts of abating a perpetrator when committing a crime. Haki Aziri faces the same two counts of abating. Also, the prosecutor asked the court to acquit Sami Luta due to lack of evidence for terrorism charges.

Six men were sentenced to a life in prison in a previous trial over the killings of four teenage boys – Kire Trichkovski, Filip Slavkovski, Cvetancho Ackovski, Aleksandar Nakjevski, and fisherman Borche Stefanovski.

The Supreme Court in late 2017 rescinded the verdicts and four defendants were released from detention. After the rescinding of the verdicts, the Monster case was taken over by the now-defunct Special Public Prosecution and a retrial was ordered.

Last week, a protest took place outside the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Skopje where protesters demanded that the prosecutor Fatime Fetai should be fired from the case. They said they took to the streets to seek justice for ‘the innocent men that are being tried’ and urge the international community to engage for a fair trial.

Also, Chief State Public Prosecutor Ljubomir Joveski said that the Monster case retrial eliminated any doubts of the case being fabricated. Most important of all, he said, is the perpetrators of the multiple killings are charged based on indisputable and hard evidence in a legitimate procedure.