With the hearing of witnesses proposed by the defense, the trial against the three accused Kochani police officers for their actions during the controls related to the Pulse nightclub has resumed Tuesday at the Skopje Basic Criminal Court.
At the beginning of the trial, the three defendants stated before the court that they do not feel guilty on the charges arising from their actions during the controls related to the Pulse nightclub in Kochani, where on March 16 last year, 63 people lost their lives and over 200 were injured in a fire.
The trial is being led by Judge Lidija Petrovska, and the prosecution is represented by Public Prosecutor Spasenka Andonova.
The first witness to be questioned today was Erhan Hadzimita, a police officer at the Kochani Police Station, who told the court that he participated in police checks twice in 2023 at the Pulse club, the first time in April and the second in December.
The police officer participated in the checks with the officer in charge, Goran Lazarov, during which he found two minors in the facility, whose ID cards he said he took and handed over to the officer in charge Lazarov. The witness said that the owner Dejan Jovanov-Deki began to protest on the police action.
“He said “do whatever you want” because we had previously had a quarrel with him about minors in the facility. That’s why we went outside, he didn’t want to cooperate with us. I stayed with the minors so that they could call their parents, and the officer in charge prepared a report,” said the witness.
The witness noted that he had previously found minors in the nightclub in April 2023 and the owner also refused to cooperate.
When asked by the public prosecutor, the witness said that when he took away the ID cards, he went to the person in charge on duty, who was in the ticket office together with the owner of the facility and his son.
Asked whether documents were requested from the owner of the disco, the witness said that the person in charge did, but the owner did not cooperate and was dismissive of them.
Asked whether this was recorded in the minutes, the witness said that he did not fill out that minute.
According to the indictment, between October 7, 2023 and February 7, 2024, defendants Kire Bogatinov and Goran Lazarov, as officials, did not perform their official duties, that is, they did not act in full according to the annex plans for action control of October 5 and November 24, 2023 when preparing the paperwork of the performed raid.
The paperwork stated misdemeanors for violation of public order and peace, but incorrect data was entered for the legal entity Pulse nightclub in Kochani.
According to the indictment, third defendant Aleksandar Temelkov, when approving the requests for initiating misdemeanor proceedings of February 1 and 7, 2024, did not check all the documentation attached to them, although he was obliged to do so, but signed them and submitted them to the court in Kochani. The claims were prepared against the inactive legal entity Classic Ltd. Kochani and a natural person indicated as responsible in the Pulse club, although, according to the indictment, they were not active entities at the time of the proceedings. With these actions, the three defendants obtained material benefits for MMMM cafe Ltd. Kochani, a subsidiary of the nightclub, as well as for the responsible person, in a manner precisely described in the indictment.
