Four former senior officials were convicted Monday on charges related to the 2017 storming of the North Macedonian Parliament.
The Criminal Court in Skopje convicted former Speaker Trajko Veljanoski, former transport minister Mile Janakieski, former labor minister Spiro Ristovski, and the former head of the secret police, Vladimir Atanasovski, of “terrorist endangerment of constitutional order,” Balkan Insight reported. All were sentenced to between six and seven years in prison.
In April 2017, a mob of approximately 200 people stormed the North Macedonian Parliament, attempting to halt the election of an ethnically Albanian speaker. Approximately 100 people were injured.
Rioters beat members of the Social Democratic Union and ethnic Albanian parties that had approved of the speaker, according to a Radio Free Europe correspondent who witnessed the event. The head of the Social Democratic Union, Zoran Zaev, now North Macedonia’s prime minister, was “severely beat” and bloodied. The RFE correspondent, other journalists, and law enforcement officers were also targeted.
The court ruled that the four defendants had “prepared and implemented a plan with acts of violence to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to the newly formed parliamentary majority.” This plan included stripping the parliament of security forces on the day of the event, as well as organizing nationalist groups and utilizing the “entire party structure” of the conservative VMRO DPMNE.
A U.S. State Department human rights report states that prior to the Monday sentencing, 33 individuals were indicted in connection to the day’s events. However, 15 individuals were granted amnesty following a December 2018 law approved by North Macedonia’s parliament. Amnesty was not granted to those who had taken part in physical violence, had carried weapons, or had organized the event. The former head of the public security bureau was given the harshest sentence of 18 years in prison.
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Some organizers of the riot have escaped prosecution by fleeing the country, including North Macedonia’s former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who was granted asylum by Hungary, according to the State Department report.
