Country arrests 30 over assault on parliament

pulse

November 28, 2017 3:20 PM

Several MPs were beaten in the rioting, including the leader of Social Democrats, Zoran Zaev, who has since become prime minister.

Macedonian police on Tuesday arrested about 30 people, including two opposition MPs, former senior police officials and an ex-minister, over an April attack on parliament in which scores of people were injured.

Around 100 nationalist demonstrators, including masked men, stormed the assembly in Skopje on April 27, attacking MPs in protest over the vote for a new parliamentary speaker.

Several MPs were beaten in the rioting, including the leader of Social Democrats, Zoran Zaev, who has since become prime minister.

The public prosecutor's office for organised crime and corruption said in a statement it had ordered an investigation into 36 people suspected of "terrorist endangerment of the constitutional order and security".

Police said around 30 people were arrested including former interior minister Mitko Cavkov and two MPs from the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party.

A few hundred VMRO-DPMNE supporters, joined by party leader Nikola Gruevski, protested against the detentions outside the Skopje court where the suspects were being brought before a judge.

The protesters chanted "Macedonia, Macedonia" and some waved small Macedonian flags.

"We demand an urgent release of all people targeted by this classic political persecution," Gruevski told reporters.

He said political rivals were aiming to "eliminate everyone thinking differently".

The April violence followed months of protests by nationalists opposed to a coalition deal between Zaev's Social Democrats and minority ethnic Albanian parties, which they alleged was a threat to national unity.

Ethnic Albanians make up around a quarter of Macedonia's two million people.

The storming of parliament, which met with international condemnation, erupted over the election of Talat Xhaferi, who is ethnic Albanian, as speaker.

The protesters alleged the vote was illegal.

The Social Democrats accused the VMRO-DPMNE -- in power for a decade until last year, and supported by the nationalists -- of fanning ethnic tensions in a bid to stay in power.

Last month, nationalist Pance Angelov was sentenced to four years in prison for violently pulling the hair of a woman MP during the attack.

In May, nine Macedonians received suspended prison sentences for their part in the violence.

pulse