The defense team representing former state security chief Saso Mijalkov is requesting answers how was Justice Minister Bojan Maricic able to know which judge voted in which way when the Skopje Appeals Court decided to release Mijalkov on bail last week.

The decision was based on an 11 million EUR bail offered by Mijalkov, but was quickly reversed by a lower level court which, on the same day, ordered Mijalkov back in detention on a different set of charges. In the meantime, Maricic publicly called out the two of the three Appeals Court judges who voted to accept the bail. One problem – the vote is secret to preserve the independence of the court from the executive and Maricic was not supposed to know who cast the “yes” votes.

This touches to the heart of our system of values clearly defined in the Constitution. The Justice Minister violated our constitutional order. This forces us to assume that the Ministry has a direct link to the judges and is receiving information from them, in violation of the law on criminal proceedings, said lawyer Ljupco Shvrgovski.