The Northern Macedonian authorities announced, on Saturday April 12, having expanded the investigation into the fire of a nightclub that left 61 dead, including former ministers and civil servants.
The Ministry of the Interior announced in a statement that in coordination with the prosecution, criminal proceedings had been engaged against nineteen people for “serious attacks on public security”.
The investigation relates to the fire on March 16 during a hip-hop concert in this Kocani nightclub, which also made nearly 200 injured.
-Fifty-two suspects
According to the prosecution, the nineteen new suspects include former ministers of the economy, officials of the ministry and agents of the Directorate of Protection and Rescue, all in office between the opening of the nightclub in 2012 and the fire in March. They “Have absolutely not respected protective measures and have thus endangered the lives of people and large -scale goods”said the prosecution, in a press release.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the fire took when the sparks of pyrotechnic machines placed in front of the stage ie the ceiling.
These last developments now bring to fifty-two the number of suspects in the survey, to which are added three companies. Police had arrested thirty-three people during the first stages of the investigation, including seven police officers, a former minister of the economy and officials of the ministry, as well as three former mayors of the city.
