2024-07-22 23:24:01
An inspection of the Skopje prison in Suto Orizari, carried out by the Directorate for Execution of Sentences of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of North Macedonia on the night of July 19, found that 11 of the 180 prisoners were not in their cells.
“There is a car park in the open part of the prison, in which according to the list there should have been only three people, and 10 were allocated there, of which four were absent. According to the list, there should be 4 convicted persons in the laundry room, it was ordered that there should be 9, of which seven were absent, we found one person on the spot, and one was on home leave,” explained the director of the Directorate for the Execution of Penalties, Alexander Pandov, at a press conference today , according to whom such an inspection in the prison is being done for the first time in seven years, BTA reported.
According to him, the director of the “Skopje” prison and former security advisor to Zoran Zaev, Filip Andov, gave verbal orders about which prisoner should be allocated where and directed, and from the open part of the prison each of them could “enter freely and he gets out while he has an alibi that he is in prison”.
Pandov specified that while they were conducting the inspection, which lasted until 3 a.m., ten of the missing prisoners returned “after an hour, two, three”, freely moved around them and talked to the police, although after 10:30 p.m. h. they should have been in their cells by now.
Early this morning officers from the Directorate of Corrections went to the prison again to find that four of the inmates who were missing on Friday night, then returned and are now missing again.
“For the most part, the situation in prisons in the Republic of (North) Macedonia is similar. We think that this is a prison, but the real situation is not like that”, declared Pandov, who announced that checks will be made in all other prisons “to see what the situation is in them”.
A week ago, an inspection carried out by employees of the “Execution of Sentences” Directorate found that the former prosecutor in the specialized prosecutor’s office, Katitsa Yaneva, who received a sentence for abuse of office and is in “Idrizovo” prison, but with permission to work during the day in his son’s office, absent from his workplace. As a result of the inspection, Janeva lost her right to work outside the prison, and according to Pandov, she has the right to request to work outside the prison again. “Let her ask,” he replied curtly when asked if she would get a new permit to do so.