The first verdict in the tragedy at the „Puls" disco in Kocani is here - and the sentences are suspended. Three local police officers - Kire Bogatinov, Goran Lazarov and Aleksandar Temelkov - have received suspended prison sentences for abuse of office. Bogatinov and Lazarov - one year each (with a three-year probation). Temelkov - two years (with four years of probation).

What did they do? In misdemeanour records from October 2023 to February 2024 they entered incorrect data. Instead of documenting the actual operator - „MMMM Kafe DOOEL" with Mitko Stojanov as the responsible person - they wrote down a defunct company, „Klasik DM DOOEL". On the surface „an administrative mistake". In practice, that is exactly what let Puls keep operating without full accountability.

Judge Lidija Petrovska stated the facts plainly: „Establishing the operator is a substantive element as important as the documented offences. The officers performed their duty only formally - the form was preserved, but the substance was missing."

For the parents of the victims of the Puls fire - 59 dead, over 150 injured - the line „form preserved, substance missing" is a definition of every institution that failed before 16 March 2025. The officers ran formal inspections, walked past the responsible person, signed records that lead nowhere. Nine months after 16 March 2026, the parents are watching three suspended sentences. No one goes to jail.

The parents are outraged - and rightly so. A suspended sentence means: if there is no new criminal offence within three (or four) years, no prison time. The people who were supposed to make sure that such a club did not operate without a license - get a chance to keep going as if nothing happened. A farmer who fails to pay VAT on time gets court rulings with far heavier weight.

The question parents are asking: if this is the first verdict, what should we expect from the ones to follow? In the other proceedings, more police officers, inspectors and municipal employees are charged. If the „suspended sentence" pattern continues - that's a message to every institution that for the biggest tragedy in modern Macedonia, nobody will spend a day in prison.

Macedonia has every right to be ashamed of this verdict. Not the legal aspect - perhaps the law allows nothing else - but the moral one. When 59 people lose their lives because of a broken system, and those responsible walk out with a „probation" - the system itself confirms that nothing will change.