Bogdan Ilievski, one of the political prisoners who were held by the Zaev regime in the broad April 2017 court case, denied the claims that the group has requested two million EUR in damages for their arrests and persecution. The claim was spread in pro-Government media outlets, which have used the trial as a propaganda coup.

It has not crossed my mind to request damages while people are still in prison, unjustly sentenced to 211 years in prison. A million euros won’t cover a day in such prisons, Ilievski said.

The trial was used by Zaev to detain and blackmail a group of VMRO-DPMNE members of Parliament, getting them to vote in favor of the new name proposal in exchange for their liberties. Organizers and participants in the protests which erupted in Skopje in April 2017, when Zaev staged an unlawful vote to elect a new Parilament Speaker, were also arrested and spent months in prison and a year in house arrest before receiving selective amnesty under a law that was mainly put in place as part of the bargain reached with the three members of Parliament.

Ilievski adds that if, after the 16 men still held in prison are released, it is determined that the group is entitled to damages, it would be given to the families of those who are currently imprisoned.

What they did to me is nothing compared to what is being done to them. But one day justice will be done, Ilievski added.

Another of the protest organizers, the famous actor Vladimir Jovanovski, also denied the claims shared by the pro-Zaev media outlets.

I already received my “damages” from this “state”, from the Republic of North Macedonia. I don’t wish to my worst enemy to be through what my family and friends were through, Jovanovski says.