Appeals court overturns the acquittal of Vanja's father: the Criminal Court did not weigh the evidence properly

The Skopje Court of Appeal upheld the life sentences for the four men convicted of the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Vanja Gjorčevska and the murder of Panče Žežovski in November 2023, among them Ljupčo Palevski - Palčo. But the acquittal of the girl's father, Aleksandar Gjorčevski, has been overturned. His case goes back for a retrial.

Gjorčevski was charged with aiding the kidnapping - according to the indictment, he gave the kidnappers information about when and where his daughter would be. The Criminal Court acquitted him, reasoning that the Public Prosecutor's Office had not proved his guilt. The appeals court is now saying that the problem may not have been the evidence, but how carefully it was read.

"The verdict for Aleksandar Gjorčevski has been overturned because the evidence of the Public Prosecutor's Office was not sufficiently assessed," the judges said at a media briefing. Their recommendation is a reassessment with specific instructions, particularly on three things: the defendants' statements given at the prosecutor's office and read out in court, the testimony of Vanja's mother, and the messages from the Viber communication.

That is a clear message from a higher court to a lower one. This is not about new evidence that surfaced later, but about material that was in the case file from the very first trial. If those messages and those statements were there all along, why did it take a second round for someone to look at them properly?

The Criminal Court had said it would schedule the retrial as soon as it received the decision. The family, the public and the defendant himself will wait for another trial on the question that has hung over this case since November 2023. This time the court knows in advance what it missed.