Skopje, 15 May 2025 (MIA) - A Tetovo court found two former heads of the Clinical Hospital in Tetovo, Florin Besimi and Artan Atemi, guilty of the crime of "grave acts against general safety" in relation to the fire that broke out at a modular Covid-19 hospital on September 8, 2021, killing 14 people. They were both sentenced to a year and a half in prison. The court also ruled that the Clinical Hospital in Tetovo, as a legal entity, was responsible for “causing general danger”.

The Clinical Hospital was given a fine of Mden 1 million.

After the verdict, Besimi extended condolences for the loss of life, but said an injustice had been committed in the court.

“This is an evasion of truth, I am not asking for mercy, I am asking for justice for the victims and myself. I want the truth to come out. The families of the victims don’t deserve wrong explanations and a false culprit,” Besimi said

A representative of the families of the victims said they aren’t happy with the verdict and stressing that the blame lies higher up.

The verdict was made as part of a retrial for the modular hospital, which began in March 2025. The ruling to retry the case was made by the Gostivar Appellate Court at a public session in April 2024, following the initial court verdict of June 5, 2023.

Fourteen people died in the COVID-19 hospital fire on Sept. 8, 2021, and several were seriously injured.

A ten-month forensic investigation into the fire followed, led by the Interior Ministry, the Faculty of Technological Sciences as well as German federal crime police experts.

After the probe was complete, the prosecution in October 2021 said the fire in the COVID-19 modular hospital — which had been set up to hospitalize COVID-19 patients and segregate them from other patients in the Tetovo hospital — was caused by an extension cord catching on fire when a reanimation machine, a mobile phone charger and another device were plugged into it at the same time.

Photo: MIA