The first defendant in the "Puls" case, Dejan Jovanov, leaves detention on 3 October. Not because of an acquittal and not because of new evidence - but because the legal deadline runs out. The indictment was assessed on 3 October 2025, and detention may last at most one year from that assessment.

The association "16 March 2025 Kočani", which organises the parents of those who died, sent a message to the Public Prosecutor's Office that does not ask for mercy, but for action within the deadlines the institutions set for themselves.

"We, the parents of the children we lost on the most terrible night for Kočani, will not quietly watch legal deadlines run out while the system is late again. If there are findings of other criminal offences against the first defendant Dejan Jovanov - Deko and legal grounds to act, then the institutions have an obligation to act now. No defendant should be saved by the slowness of the system," the statement reads.

Association president Aleksandar Naunov put the same thing more briefly: "Our children have no deadline, justice must not expire."

Almost all the defendants are already out

Jovanov is the last in a line. Todor Jovanov, brother of the "Puls" owner, left house arrest after a guarantee of 319,154 euros in real estate was accepted. Mihail Jovanov is also under precautionary measures.

Jane Jančevski and Ivica Grozdanovski remained in house arrest, but a guarantee of over 33,000 euros in real estate has already been accepted for Jančevski - once the mortgage is registered, he too should be released. For Mitko Stojanov, Martin Gjorgjiev and Stojančo Dimitriev, house arrest has been replaced with precautionary measures. A guarantee of 849,602 euros has been set for Bekim Hadžiu.

The Criminal Court explains that once detention expires, the court determines additional precautionary measures ex officio to secure the defendant's presence in the rest of the proceedings.

The year and a half that has passed

That is formally correct and legally tidy. Precautionary measures exist precisely for a case like this, and their purpose is attendance at trial, not punishment before a verdict. Detention was never meant to be a punishment either.

Except this is a process in which, after a year and a half, there is still no final conviction. The indictment waited to be assessed, the assessment started the clock, the clock is now running out - and the trial is still going.

The parents are not asking for someone to stay behind bars because it makes things easier for them. They are asking a question the institutions have so far not answered clearly: what did the prosecution and the court do with that year, and is the pace of the proceedings the reason the conversation is now about deadlines instead of accountability.

"Behind this tragedy we see years of failures, silence, permissions granted and action not taken," the association's statement says. That sentence is not only about the night of 16 March. It is about everything that preceded it - the permits, the inspections that were never carried out, the rules that existed on paper.

"Let the law work. Let the institutions work. And let everyone whose guilt is proven in court answer for it," Naunov said.

That is the most reasonable demand anyone could make. And yet, in a country where proceedings are measured in years, it is a demand that has to be repeated in public so it is not forgotten.