A week after the police brutality story, the Interior Ministry has its own version: the passenger took the officer's gun

A week ago the public was hearing the story of two young men who say they were brutally mistreated by police in Saraj. Over the weekend the Interior Ministry announced that six officers would be suspended and face disciplinary proceedings over "a series of irregularities". Then yesterday, exactly seven days after the incident, the Ministry came out with a completely different picture - and with criminal complaints against the young men themselves.

According to the Ministry, on October 7 at around 8:25 pm on Crnogorska Street in Skopje, police were lying in wait for a BMW, acting on intelligence that marijuana would be bought and sold there. When the officers moved toward the car, the driver started it, hit a lamp post and threw a bag of marijuana out of the window. One officer drew his service pistol and shouted "stop, police" through the half-open window - and the passenger, the Ministry claims, took the gun from him.

A chase followed through Gjorče Petrov toward the Skopje - Tetovo motorway, with sirens and flashing lights ignored and three warning shots fired into the air. The BMW finally hit the hard shoulder and rolled over. The driver, P.A. (24), and the passenger, E.P. (21), were detained, the pistol was recovered and the bag of marijuana was found at the scene.

Prosecutors now have criminal complaints against both men for obstructing an official in the performance of duty and for distributing narcotics. A third complaint, for the drugs only, has been filed against a person with the initials M.T., who the Ministry says is connected to the case.

The two stories don't cancel each other out. If the passenger really did take a police officer's gun, that is a serious crime. But it gives officers no right to beat people later, once they are already detained and in police hands. The Ministry itself admits that its Internal Control Department is still looking into "possible irregularities" in how the officers acted - and six officers don't get suspended for nothing.

So the question isn't who is more to blame. It's why the details about the ambush, the gun and the marijuana only surfaced a week later, after the case had already become a political issue. Did the Ministry know all this on October 8? If it did, why did it stay silent? If it didn't, what exactly was it checking for an entire week?

The final answer has to come from the prosecutors and the court, not from press releases. Until then the public has two versions from one institution - and every right to demand that both are investigated to the end.