Six Suspensions over the Beating in Saraj - and the Police Report Is Still Under Lock and Key

Six police officers will be suspended and disciplinary proceedings opened against them for breaching work rules. That's what the Interior Ministry did four days after an intervention in Saraj in which two young men, aged 21 and 23, ended up beaten. And only after the footage was already circulating in public.

According to a statement from 11 October, internal affairs reviewed the footage and witness statements and found "a series of irregularities" in the officers' conduct. Prosecutors are meanwhile ordering forensic examinations, and once the evidence is documented the ministry says it will file the appropriate submissions. On paper, the system is responding. The question is whether it would have responded without the video.

The footage that changed things

The public didn't learn about the 7 October incident from the police. DUI first published photos of the injured young men, then a video: filmed from a distance, without sound, showing several people kicking and punching others in front of a parked car while police lights flash through the fog. The two young men say they were hit even after they had been subdued and handcuffed.

If this was a serious police operation, why did the public find out about it from a party press release and from the injured young men, rather than from a police bulletin?

The union's version

The Independent Police Union came out with a completely different story. According to them, it was an operation against drug trafficking on the Skopje - Tetovo motorway. The suspects first tried to run officers over, then grabbed a service weapon from one of them, and while fleeing caused several traffic accidents in which they were injured. During an additional search, the union says, drugs were also found. The union strongly condemns attempts to give the case an ethnic slant and calls for a careful review of the whole incident.

None of these claims - about the weapon, the drugs or the cause of the injuries - appears in the Interior Ministry's statement. And even if all of them are true, two things remain separate: what a suspect did before the arrest, and what the police are allowed to do to him once he's been subdued. A court decides on the first. The law forbids the second.

Politics got there before the investigation

DUI is now demanding that the ministry release the patrol's initial report, the records and the supporting documents, with personal data and the integrity of the investigation protected. Their questions are simple: who wrote the report, what did the officers involved in the intervention say, and does their version match the footage?

VLEN hits back that the institutions reacted in record time and that no one can escape responsibility. Deputy Interior Minister Astrit Iseni said that "the uniform is there to protect citizens, not to beat them" and that "no suspicion justifies violence against a citizen". Immediately afterwards he accused the opposition of turning violence into political point-scoring.

It's good that the deputy minister said that sentence. It would be better if the ministry backed it up with documents. The report DUI is asking for isn't a partisan whim - it's the minimum any police force owes the public when footage shows an intervention involving kicks and punches. If the officers' version matches the footage, publishing it will protect them. If it doesn't, the suspension is only the beginning.