SKOPJE, May 4: A former Macedonian interior minister accused of ordering the murder of seven migrants in a stunt to win Western approval for fighting "Islamic terrorism" went missing on Tuesday , police and his lawyers said.

Ljube Boskovski, a rightwing nationalist and interior minister in the former VMRO-DPMNE government and six former members of the security forces, stand accused of staging a fake ambush in March 2002, and were charged with murder on Friday after Macedonia's Parliament lifted Boskovski's immunity.

The government has accused them of identifying a migrant group of six Pakistanis and one Indian, smuggling them into the country from Bulgaria, murdering them and dressing up the killing ground to make it look as if they were armed Islamic militants infiltrating Europe.

Earlier Boskovski's lawyers called a news conference to say police had taken their client into custody. The report was denied by Macedonian authorities. The ambush occurred in March 2002, six months after the September 11 attacks in USA, and when Macedonia was recovering from a five-month ethnic conflict which almost ignited an all-out civil war with separatist Albanians.

FOREIGN OFFICE: The Pakistan government is in touch with the Macedonian authorities and making every effort to seek full justice for the six Pakistanis who were killed last year, a foreign office spokesman said on Tuesday.