Two people have been charged and suspected of violence over Friday’s incident involving Skopje Mayor Danela Arsovska in Cair. On Saturday, the prime suspect, Sulejman Lamallari (aka Commander Baruti), was issued an eight-day house arrest measure. Prosecutors will, however, appeal the decision, made by the Criminal Court.
The second suspect was issued measures of precaution (ban on leaving residence, obligation to report to court, taking away of passport, and ban on contacting and restraining order regarding certain persons).
“Yesterday, the prime suspect was threatening and physically attacked the Mayor of Skopje, who, together with employees of City services, upon a previous report, had come to conduct extraordinary supervision of an illegal facility under construction on Sevastopolska Street.
He presented himself as the owner of the facility under construction, after which he started to roughly offend her, threaten her, after which he attacked her physically, too. When a reaction came from the other City service employees and Interior Ministry members, and when they removed the prime suspect, the second suspect, too, continued the threats,” the Prosecutor’s Office had said previously that day.
The Interior Ministry stated that 24-hour police protection would be provided for Arsovska. Also, it confirmed it had submitted the criminal charge to the Office over the incident. However, the institution denied accusations that it hadn’t acted in cases related to the Mayor.
PM Hristijan Mickoski declined to comment on the matter, only calling on institutions to act.
“The state has institutions. I call on them to act upon the case. Regarding the Mayor of Skopje, a lot of things have been said. I wouldn’t have anything to add”, he stressed.
On the other hand, SDSM called on Pance Toskovski to resign as Interior Minister.
“Yesterday’s incident and shameful inaction by the Interior Ministry and Toskovski was a message to all that would dare to talk about crime, show misuse, point to corruption. Yesterday’s event is a message to all judges, all prosecutors or citizens not to dare to touch the government’s crime. This is a message that whosoever will expose their crimes can be next. This is a system of fear and threats coming directly from the government”, the opposition party stated.
In response, however, the ruling party said SDSM had publicly commented on Arsovska-related matters just three times.
“The first time, it was verbally attacking her by saying she was incompetent and had Bulgarian citizenship. The second, when in opposition, it was using her to verbally attack Mickoski and VMRO-DPMNE. The third, when it is defending Danela together with Bulgarians”, VMRO-DPMNE pointed out.