Policeman Who Beat Young Man to Death Gets 14 Years in Prison

This post is part of our special coverage Macedonia Protests 2011.

The trial of the policeman suspected of beating a young man to death while on duty as the PM's bodyguard during the celebration of election victory on the night between June 5 and 6, 2011, ended on Monday, Jan. 16. The police officer, Igor Spasov, member of the special forces and the only person on trial for the murder of Martin Neshkoski, received a sentence of 14 years in prison.

The attempt to cover up the murder sparked a protest movement against police brutality, through which citizens of Macedonia demanded justice, including apprehension of all accomplices, command responsibility, and political responsibility. The public prosecutor denied [mk] the victim's family's formal request to press criminal charges against the known and unknown accomplices, such as the policemen who were nearby during the murder and contaminated the crime scene afterwards, as well as those who were involved in the cover-up attempt.

The trial had a dozen sessions that were not extensively covered and analyzed by most of Macedonia's media, which rely on revenue from advertisements paid from the state budget. A notable exception is the portal PlusInfo.mk, which published a retrospective of the case [mk] the day before the sentence was announced.

Justice for Martin blog published a summary [mk] of the first ten sessions of the trial, written by activist Voislav Stojanovski's and first published [mk] by Radio Free Europe:

Click here for the full text written by Filip Stojanovski