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Thirty-one years after a car bomb nearly killed Kiro Gligorov, the first president of independent Macedonia, the attack has returned to the centre of the country’s political confrontation — not because the long-running investigation has produced a breakthrough, but because the two main political parties are once again using the unresolved case to accuse each other.
The bombing took place just one day after Gligorov met then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, with details of the meeting never made public.
The anniversary on October 3 has become an opportunity for the opposition Social Democratic Union (SDSM) and the ruling right-wing VMRO-DPMNE to revisit one of the darkest episodes of the country’s early independence, with SDSM directly linking the assassination attempt to what it describes as the political tradition of VMRO-DPMNE, while VMRO-DPMNE has rejected the accusation as baseless and demanded evidence.
The political exchange is striking precisely because the central fact of the case has remained unchanged for three decades: the perpetrator and those who ordered the attack have never been identified, and the investigation remains open.
A bomb in the heart of Skopje
On October 3, 1995, at around 9:50 a.m., Gligorov was travelling from his residence to parliament in central Skopje. As his official car passed the historic Bristol Hotel on Macedonia Street, a remotely detonated explosive hidden in a parked Citroën Ami 8 was activated.
Built in 1923, the Bristol is one of Skopje’s oldest surviving hotel buildings and an iconic landmark in the city. The historic hotel, which had stood idle and neglected for years, was sold to a new owner in July 2026 — more than three decades after it became the site of the assassination attempt on Macedonia’s first president.
According to the investigation, about 20 kilograms of explosives were used. The blast seriously injured Gligorov, particularly in the head and eye area, and killed his driver, Aleksandar Spirovski.
Gligorov's bodyguard, Ilco Teovski, was injured, while a passer-by was later killed and several other people were injured.
The scale of the investigation that followed reflected the seriousness of the attack. Police searched more than 30,000 vehicles and over 15,000 buildings, while around 19,000 people were searched. People considered potential suspects were questioned, but no one was ultimately charged in connection with the assassination attempt.
The investigation established that the attack had been carefully prepared and organised. It did not, however, establish publicly who had planned it or who carried it out.
An important distinction three decades later
The attack took place when North Macedonia was still a young and vulnerable state.
Independence had been declared only four years earlier, and the country was trying to establish itself internationally while navigating an extremely complicated regional environment following the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Just weeks before the bombing, on September 13, 1995, Macedonia and Greece had signed the Interim Accord in New York, an important step in reducing tensions between the two countries and opening a new phase in their relationship.
The assassination attempt on Gligorov came at a time when the country was moving decisively away from what author Zoran Dorevski describes as the “orbit of Belgrade” and charting a course towards Euro-Atlantic integration, Dorevski said at the promotion of his book The Skopje Assassination, infoplus.mk reported.
Gligorov had become the central figure in this difficult diplomatic period. His presidency was associated with the country's effort to avoid being dragged into the wars accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia and to establish an independent foreign-policy course.
That makes the unanswered question surrounding the bombing particularly powerful: was Gligorov targeted because of a specific political decision, because of his international policy, or for another reason entirely?
Over the years, numerous theories have circulated. Some have pointed towards political actors inside the country, others towards regional or international interests. But speculation has never become a judicially established explanation.
One theory surrounding the assassination attempt points to the powerful Bulgarian business group Multigroup, headed by businessman Ilija Pavlov, who was himself assassinated in 2003. During the 1990s, Multigroup had significant business interests in Macedonia, particularly in trade and alleged smuggling activities linked to the embargo on the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).
According to this theory, Gligorov and some members of the Macedonian government sought to curb Multigroup’s growing economic and political influence in the country, creating a potentially serious conflict of interests.
An unresolved case becomes political ammunition
The SDSM used this year's anniversary to turn the unresolved investigation into a broader political attack on VMRO-DPMNE and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski.
In a statement, the SDSM said the assassination attempt was aimed at stopping the young state and its democracy, linking the attack to the political tradition of Vanco Mihajlov, the controversial leader of the old VMRO, and, by extension, to today’s VMRO-DPMNE.
The party also referred to former prime minister and long-time VMRO-DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski, whose professional career included working at a bank controlled by Pavlov’s Multigroup in 1995. The SDSM further invoked the April 27, 2017 attack on parliament, arguing that the same political logic had resurfaced.
The connection between Multigroup and VMRO-DPMNE has never been officially or legally established, but one documented link concerns Gruevski. In 1995, when Gligorov was assassinated, Gruevski was a department director at Balkanbank, which was then owned and controlled by Pavlov’s Multigroup.
Those are political allegations, not findings of the Gligorov investigation. No court has established that VMRO-DPMNE or its current leadership was responsible for the 1995 attack.
VMRO-DPMNE responded in a statement rejecting the accusation outright and asking the SDSM to provide evidence for its claims. The party also turned the question back on the SDSM, pointing to the fact that the investigation had not produced a resolution despite periods when the Social Democrats held government.
The party specifically highlighted Ljubomir Frčkoski, who was interior minister when Gligorov was attacked, and questioned why the case had remained unresolved under successive governments.
The mystery that never went away
Gligorov eventually recovered sufficiently to return to office on January 10, 1996, and completed his second presidential term in 1999. He died in 2012, aged 94.
The investigation, however, never reached the same conclusion.
An extensive operation, reportedly involving cooperation with foreign security services, produced neither a definitive perpetrator nor a publicly established mastermind.
That leaves North Macedonia with an unusual historical paradox. The country has changed dramatically since 1995. It joined Nato, changed its constitutional name to North Macedonia, pursued EU membership and experienced several major political crises and transfers of power.
Yet one of the most consequential attacks in the country's early history remains unresolved.
And every October 3, the unanswered question returns. This year it has returned with particular force, because the political parties are not simply remembering Gligorov. They are arguing over what his assassination means — and, more importantly, what it says about the political system that emerged after independence.
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