Aleksandar Gjorchevski, the father of the murdered Vanja Gjorchevska, testified in the Basic Criminal Court in Skopje, claiming no involvement in the case or with the defendants. He expressed his inability to bear seeing them, noting their apparent lack of guilt or remorse.

Gjorchevski specifically referred to the first defendant, Ljupcho Palevski – Palcho, as the “tsar,” a title found in the phone of another defendant, Keshishev. The father recounted the harrowing details revealed during the hearings, describing how his child was grabbed, tied up, placed in trunks and bags, and how efforts were made to conceal the evidence.

He stated that police initially suspected him, presenting him with pictures to identify Vanja and suggesting she had run away with a boyfriend or traveled to Sweden. He said investigators focused on information from Vanja’s computer, suggesting she might have been recruited for ISIS and traveled to Sweden due to her online discussions about religion.

Gjorchevski recounted an interaction with an inspector named Kire, where he insisted that Vanja had been kidnapped, dismissing the idea that she had voluntarily strayed from her path to school. He felt that the police made him appear foolish and that the investigation was misdirected from the start.