Today is the last day when defendants charged over the April 2017 incident in the Parliament can submit a request for amnesty, according to the law that was passed recently.

Around 40 requests have already been received, and some of them are from members of Parliament who are needed to complete the process of renaming Macedonia into North Macedonia, and who negotiated the law with the Government. One of them, Krsto Mukoski, confirmed that he requested amnesty and said that he believes he deserves one. Mukoski is in the center of the controversy related to this law, since he not only claimed amnesty, but as the talks were on-going, his brother received a major public contract worth almost 700.000 EUR, in a move which is widely seen as bribing Mukoski for his vote, on top of blackmailing him with his freedom.

Other members of Parliament who did not vote to begin the process to rename Macedonia, like Ljupco Dimovski and Johan Tarculovski, also requested amnesties. It is believed they too were pressured to vote in favor of opening the renaming process, but refused to do so.

Requests from amnesties also came from Aleksandar Vasilevski Ninja, Mihail and Stefan Mladenovski and other persons charged with violent conduct during the incident, some of whom gave highly controversial testimonies in which they pointed fingers against President Ivanov, whose cooperation would be needed after the amendments are passed in Parliament.

Some media outlets reported that political prisoners such as Boris Damovski and Igor Durlovski also requested amnesty. There is still no confirmation of this. Two of those detained, Jane Cento and Igor Jug, said that they will not request amnesty. Cento is the grandson of Macedonian World War Two commander Metodija Andonov Cento, who was also politically persecuted by the Communist regime after the war.