The protests were prompted by an increasing number of media reports stating that the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has indicted Boskoski. Croatian authorities are considered responsible for keeping him in custody and for willing to transfer him to The Hague if so required.
A possible indictment against Boskoski would refer to the case of Ljuboten, a village near Skopje, where during the 2001 conflict with ethnic Albanian rebels, Macedonian forces killed ten Albanian civilians as claimed by the villagers.
The then state leadership claimed that there was an armed group in the village which planted a pressure-activated mine which killed eight Macedonian soldiers the day before the village was attacked. The order for Macedonian soldiers to engage the Albanian group came from the then supreme commander of the Macedonian army, President Boris Trajkovski.
Boskoski is in custody in Pula on suspicion of ordering the killing of seven Asians in the spring of 2002 while he was interior minister. The current Macedonian government claims that those people were economic immigrants, while at the time of their murder they were claimed to be terrorists planning to attack state institutions and some embassies in Skopje.