The Skopje Court still hasn’t given the verdicts in the second April 27th trial to the defendants – former Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski, former ministers Spire Ristoski and Mile Janakieski and the former UBK agency director Vladimir Andonovski. This prevents them from appealing the verdicts in this politically motivated trial, where they were sentenced to between 6 and 6.6 years in prison.

The sentencing was in late July. According to law, the sentence must be prepared 15 days after its published, and no later than 60 days – which means that the final deadline was on September 24th. According to the defense teams, this is another move meant to prevent them from organizing an effective appeal process.