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In Skopje, 16 out of 17 defendants of the violent events of April 27, 2017 in the Parliament of North Macedonia were sentenced to a total of 211 years in prison by the Criminal Court.
Mitko Cavkovi, former director of the Public Security Bureau, received the highest sentence, 18 years in prison.Only one of the accused, opera singer Igor Durlyovski, was released from charges in the absence of evidence.
The Judge Dobrilla Kacarska said that Mr. Durllovski while was in Parliament on the critical night of April 27, 2017, he was not seen to have exerted violence, neither by the parliament's security cameras nor from the recordings of television cameras that were inside the hall.
The accused were sentenced for the "terrorist threat of constitutional order and security".
Seven-year prison sentence was given to Abdulfeta Halimi, a parliamentary security officer, due to the lack of response. According to the judge, Halimi saved the life of MP Zijadin Sela.
With 15 years of imprisonment were sentenced: Mitko Peshov, Dusko Lazarev, Goran Gjoshevski Levi, Munir Pepic, Jane Cento, Nikola Mitrevski Kolo and Vlatko Trajkovski.
Vilijam Mihajlovski got 14 years in prison, while Oliver Popovski 13. Igor Jug, Mladen Dodevski and Gorancho Angellovski were sentenced to 12 years in prison, while Aleksandar Vasilevski (The Ninja) was sentenced to 8 years in prison. The latter had been in direct communication with the headquarters in the VMRO-DPMNE party, from where decisions and orders were made regarding these bloody events. But then he agreed to talk about the way the organization was organized and the names of the actors involved in the violence.
Initially, 33 were accused, but the Parliament adopted an amnesty specially law for these events, pardoning five opposition MPs of VMRO-DPMNE and a number of other people, among them VMRO's activists.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, former Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski, former ministers Mile Janakieski and Spiro Ristovski and former secret agent Nikola Boskovski, are accused of being the main organizer of the violence in parliament. The latter fled to Greece. Meanwhile, former PM Gruevski is in Hungary where he has been granted asylum, while former parliament speaker Veljanoski is defended by his immunity of deputy; The parliament failed to remove his immunity.
In the "bloody Thursday" violent events, the people that were injured most were Ziadin Sela of Alliance for Albanians and Zoran Zaev, leader of the Social Democratic League, who then became prime minister of the country.