Skopje Court has sentenced Macedonian patriots to 81 years and six months in jail, the court ruled for the defendants for entering Parliament and “attempted murder” of MP Ziyadin Sela. Macedonian law stipulates the longest sentences for ‘attempted murder’ is up to two years prison, Skopje attorneys claim the sentencing by the Court is actually illegal, by law.
Nikola Viminovski received 13 years and six months, Kire Gjorgjievski 13 years, Aleksandar Janevski Toshta 13 years, and 10 years and six months for Andrei Micov, Oliver Oshavkovski, Nikolce Dimitrievski and Kosta Delorov.
The same Skopje Court a day earlier sentenced Ridvan Dervishi, Lulzim Bitri, Halil Kamberi and Sabit Rexhepi to four months jail for the murder of Naip Rexhepi. The defendant Lulzim Bitri, a citizen of Albania, will be banned from entering Macedonia for five years once his four month sentence is served.
In only two days, two drastically different judgments, from both ends of the scale, in the case of Macedonian patriots, a newly invented scale was used.
The case around Sela, where many of the witnesses said that some of the defendants had helped Sela, but certainly had no intention of killing him, almost equalizing them with murder, because the sentencing is identical. There are serious doubts about this case and there are political motives behind, while the defendants received draconian and illegal convictions here, the defendants in the “Monster” case, where they are charged with brutally executing five teens at Smilkovo Lake on Easter in 2012 were freed from jail. In addition the Court has freed more than 50 drug traffickers and murderers cutting short their jail time in some cases by 80%.
