"We believe that there are no elements for the indictment and will therefore use all legal means and oppose his transfer to The Hague," Hodak told Hina.
He said that the defence would ask the county court in the northern city of Pula to check if the indictment referred to their client and if the crimes he was charged with were within the jurisdiction of the UN tribunal.
Hodak said he would appeal to the Supreme Court if a lower court passed a ruling on Boskoski's transfer.
The attorney said that he was not familiar with the particulars of the indictment, which was sent to Macedonian authorities, but he presumed that Boskoski was charged with the killing of a dozen Albanian civilians in the Macedonian village of Ljubotno near Skopje, during the 2001 conflict between Macedonian forces and Albanian rebels.
Hodak said that his client stuck by the statement that he had given to Hague investigators late last November in Pula, namely, that he had not known about the crime nor could have prevented it and that when he learned of it, he ordered an investigation, pressed charges against the suspects and requested that the perpetrators be punished.
Hodak said he was surprised that the Hague tribunal sent the indictment to Macedonia and not to Croatia, where Boskoski lives and has been in prison since last August and where in the meantime he was indicted for being responsible for the killing of seven economic immigrants from Pakistan and India while he was Macedonia's minister of the interior in 2002. Boskoski is charged with making and carrying out a plan to commit the murders in an attempt to show the United States that Macedonia was taking part in the international fight against terrorism.
Hodak said that officials of the Justice Ministry stated that they had not received the indictment. Jaksa Muljacic, assistant to the Justice Minister in charge of cooperation with international criminal courts, also said that no indictment had been received.