Skopje, 26 September 2023 (MIA) — Minister of Justice Krenar Lloga later this week will provide a detailed briefing to the media on the draft Law on Amnesty, and in the meantime it will be forwarded to Parliament, Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski told a press conference Tuesday.

in response to reporters' questions, PM Kovachevski recalled that the bill had been reviewed at the government's previous session. Then, he said, it was decided that it should be aligned with the existing legislative regarding some aspects, one of which was dealing with convicts abroad according to international conventions.

"This was done in the meantime," Kovachevski noted.

Previously, responding to allegations of Democratic Union leader Pavle Trajanov that SDSM and DUI were preparing pardons in return for VMRO-DPMNE MPs to vote for the constitutional amendments in Parliament, Kovachevski said the proposed Law on Amnesty did not apply to cases of the Special Proescutor's Office, the April 27 Parliament Storming case, or any parliamentary officials who have been charged and put on trial.

The bill has not received the support from the opposition party VMRO-DPMNE. Its leader Hristijan Mickoski threatened to block it.

"This law that has been proposed and is available to the public is the Law on Amnesty of criminals who received promises from some political parties that they would be freed, either completely or partially," Mickoski said.

"Unfortunately, those political parties, or part of those political parties, are in today's Government and you can see this law does not respond, literally neither to the needs nor to the expectations of the public.

"In the name of this, VMRO-DPMNE not only will not support this Law on Amnesty but also, through democratic tools, will block it," Mickoski said.

On Sept. 13, the Ministry of Justice said it prepared the draft Law on Amnesty, which grants full amnesty or reduces prison sentences for minor offences.

According to the Ministry of Justice in a press release, the goal is to unburden the penitentiaries, considering that the situation in these facilities has been alarming in recent times, and this was highlighted in numerous international reports as well as the Committee for the Prevention of Torture at the Council of Europe.

The law proposes a full amnesty be granted to individuals serving sentences up to six months, while convicts serving a sentence longer than six months, will receive a 30 percent reduction to their sentence.

“The amnesty doesn’t apply to individuals serving life sentences; the crime of murder, crimes against elections, against gender freedom and moral, against the state, against humanity and international law, the crimes ‘abuse of official position and authorization’ from article 353, ‘unscrupulous operation within the service’ from article 353-c, all crimes against public order from article 394 to article 394-d from the Criminal Code, as well as family violence and gender-based violence,” stressed the Ministry of Justice.

The amnesty also doesn’t apply to the crimes of “robbery” from article 237, paragraph 5, and “armed robbery” from article 238, paragraph 5 of the Criminal Code; the crime of “fraud to the detriment of the European Community funds,” from article 249-a; “money laundering and other income from crime” from article 273; “taking bribe” from article 357; “giving bribe” from article 358; “giving reward for unlawful influence” from article 359 of the Criminal Code.

“Additionally, the amnesty doesn’t apply to individuals who committed the crimes after September 1, 2023, nor to individuals who were elected or appointed officials in North Macedonia when they committed the crimes. The amnesty doesn’t apply to convicts that, until its entry into force, are subject to an arrest warrant due to being unavailable to the authorities,” said the Ministry of Justice. sk/mr