Former Justice Minister Vlado Kambovski believes that the court should count the time Mile Janakieski spent in house arrest toward the sentence he was given this week.

Janakieski was sent to prison to serve out a three and a half years sentence in a politicized trial over alleged election interference. He has already served more than four and a half years in house arrest, ordered to him as part of the long persecution campaign by the SDSM regime.

When a person is tried in several different criminal cases, with different charges, the rule applies that during a sentencing, the court must take into account orders for house arrest already given to the defendant, regardless of the case. This is an imperative clause in the law. If not, the court violates the rule of presumption of innocence in the other trials against the defendant, said Kambovski.

University professor Gordan Kalajdziev also agreed with this position, saying that the house arrests ordered to Janakieski in different cases apply to all the cases he is charged in, and should count against any prison sentence he is given.

Janakieski was attacked by Albanian terrorists in the Idrizovo prison in 2019, during a previous detention there and suffered injuries. His defense team requested that the house arrests he already served are counted against the prison time, but this request is still being considered by the court.