Amnesty process: Requests not filed by Five defendants

The deadline to file requests in the case concerning the 27 April 2017 attacks in Parliament has expired. The former Director of the Public Security Bureau, Mitko Cavkov, hasn’t filed a request, his lawyer, Saso Dukovski, said on Wednesday. Four other defendants, Igor Jug, Jane Cento, Igor Durlovski and Dusko Lazarov, haven’t filed a request either. The Criminal Court has received 62 requests. According to the Court, the requests that it will additionally receive by mail in the legal deadline will be taken into consideration as well. The five-day deadline during which the Court and Prosecutor’s Office need to make a decision on who will be given an amnesty is underway. Among the 64 persons are also Elenko Milanov, who is an lawyer of several defendants. Judge Dobrila Kacarska, who heads the Trial Council, asked him before the start of Wednesday’s hearing over the 27 April case whether he was perhaps charged over the attacks. “It’s your legal right to file an amnesty request, but I don’t know on which grounds it is,” she stressed. Kacarska will request exclusion from the case if the Court’s President, Ivan Dzolev, adheres to the stand that she should amnesty those she tries. As he said in a telephone conversation with Telma TV, all amnesty requests that the Criminal Council gave back to her on Tuesday were sent by her the following day to the Council. “If this ping-pong ends up with her, she refuses to try those that will remain uncovered by the amnesty process,” the TV station said. Lawyers in the case share Kacarska’s view. They consider that the Court should decide on who will be amnestied. The same day, the trial over the 27 April case continued and saw the final presentation of additional evidence for part of the defendants.