Skopje, 15 April 2024 (MIA) – In an operation carried out on Monday morning, the Department for Combating Organized and Serious Crime within the Ministry of Interior (MoI) detained seventeen prison police officers stationed in the Skopje-based Idrizovo penitentiary. 

A public prosecutor on the case has issued an order to conduct an investigation against six people, five of whom are suspected of having committed a crime of instigating a prison escape in October 2023, while one person is suspected of assisting a prison escape. 

In addition, the public prosecutor is conducting a pre-trial investigation against 11 people on grounds of suspicion that they have committed a crime of extended duration involving “unlawful release of a person deprived of liberty” in the period October 19-26, 2023.  

During the convict's stay in the penitentiary, the suspects acting as co-perpetrators while on duty have enabled release of the convicted person entrusted to their custody, by allowing the convicted person to leave the facility without police escort and return after several hours of absence. 

“Due to circumstances pointing to existence of a risk of absconding, hiding, falsifying or destroying evidence of crime, as well as hindering the investigation by influencing witnesses and accomplices, the prosecutor on the case from the Basic Public Prosecutor's Office for Prosecution of Organized Crime and Corruption, proposed to the pre-trial judge at the Skopje-based Criminal Court to order detention for six of the suspects, as well as precautionary measures for the eleven people under pre-trial investigation,” the Prosecutor’s Office said in a press release.  

The MoI said that all 17 people who were detained on Monday have been handed over to the Skopje-based Criminal Court for further proceedings. 

Photo: MIA archive