No judge wants to try DUI officials


The trial of electoral irregularities in Cair “Titanic 3”, which is being tried by officials from the ruling DUI, after many delays, accusations between the SPO and the Court and threats from lawyers to prosecutors, is back to the top.

The trial judge Olja Ristova has submitted and the court accepted her request for exemption from the case. Ristova was allegedly hurt by the statements of the Special Public Prosecutor Katica Janeva, who cast doubt on the judge’s conduct and accused the court that by not establishing order in a courtroom, it encouraged one of the lawyers in the case to threaten the prosecutors of the SPO working on this specific case, Fatime Fetai and Gavril Bubevski.
“Judge Ristova believes that with this unfounded media influence on the subject matter for which any debate is already taking place in the presence of media representatives, NGOs and international representatives in the country, direct pressure is being made and is questioning its independence and impartiality in the conduct , which raises doubts in the public,” the Basic Court said.
The Criminal Court shares the same opinion with Judge Ristova and understands the statements of the SPO as an attempt to direct pressure on her. The court stands in defense of Ristova and claims that she has considered of all the requests of the parties, and the order in the courtroom has never been brought into question.

However, in order to remove even the slightest doubt, the court accepted the request and Judge Ristova will not act in this case. Now the case that has reached the evidence procedure will start from the beginning and will be assigned to another judge. The trial against the coordinator of the DUI caucus, Ejup Alimi and Ismet Guri, who were charged with destroying election material at the 2013 Cair election, followed a series of controversy. The trial was postponed several times because Alimi had duties as an MP and coordinator of the caucus. When the trial was just about to begin, the second judge in the case, Gordana Spireska, was forced to leave the trial for her husband’s ill-health condition, lawyer Efto Spirovski. After this delay, the trial council for this case was replaced with another one, which was done by the President of the Criminal Court, Ivan Dzolev. In place of Spireska, Judge Ljubinka Baseska was appointed second judge, who tried the current Prime Minister Zoran Zaev in the “Coup” case. After several months, Judge Spireska was elected a member of the Judicial Council, a body in which she should decide on the selection and dismissal of her colleagues and to monitor and evaluate their work. The trial continued with the new trial, but the authorities failed to bring one of the key witnesses in Germany and did not appear in court to give a statement.
For another witness, the Special Public Prosecutor’s Office expressed suspicion that someone has put pressure on her or someone threatened her, after the female witness forgot everything that has happened on Election Day. The Special Prosecutor Ljuben Lape claimed that this witness in the SPO had stated that she was afraid of the aggressiveness of Ismet Guri, and that she did not remember anything before the court and the public, nor did she say that to the prosecutors from the SPO, nor did she know Ismet Guri. The latest scandal of this trial happened when the US public prosecutors announced that Alimi’s lawyer, Mefail Arslani, was threatening prosecutors outside the courtroom. He sent a message to Bubeski through Fetai: “You are one of ours, so we don’t know what to do with you, but we will make the “kaur” (offensive term for a Christian) pay.” These threats occurred two months before they were revealed, and prosecutor Bubevski filed criminal charges against Arslani. Janeva claimed in the public that there had always been signals from prosecutors that she had no order in the courtroom and condemned the court because it had not responded to these threats earlier. Alimi and Guri are the only DUI officials charged with the cases of the Special Public Prosecutor’s Office. Investigations opened by the SPO against DUI leader Ali Ahmeti and current Deputy Prime Minister Bujar Osmani will probably fail, if they fail to complete the regular prosecution after the Supreme Court has adopted a legal opinion that the SPO has no jurisdiction over the investigations that were opened after June 30, 2017.

Frosina Fakova – Serafinovic