Skopje Criminal Court

As the trial of 30 people accused of participating in the violent storming of Macedonia's parliament in 2017 continues, the Prosecution and Interior Ministry say they are still seeking the possible masterminds behind the attack.

Skopje Criminal Court on Friday found the businessmen Sead Kocan and one other guilty of falsifying documents in 2011 to win a 17-million-euros tender to extract coal from the Suvodol mine near the town of Bitola for the state power company, ELEM.

The tender was awarded to his consortium in 2012.

The Skopje Criminal Court on Thursday handed heavy jail sentences to seven men for a premeditated murder attempt on Ziadin Zela, an MP and leader of the small opposition Alliance for Albanians.

Nikola Gruevski, Macedonia's former prime minister and former leader of the VMRO DPMNE party, was jailed for two years on Wednesday for "receiving a reward", in the form of a luxury Mercedes, after previously "illegally influencing" the other two accused to commit the illegal purchase of the vehicle.

The ruling was a first-instance verdict and Gruevski may appeal the sentence.

Macedonia's Special Prosecution said on Monday that it is dropping all charges against 11 ethnic Albanian residents of the north-eastern village of Sopot who were being retried for allegedly planting a mine in 2003 that killed two Polish NATO soldiers and one Macedonian civilian.

Ziadin Sela, MP and leader of the Alliance for Albanians party, on Monday told the Skopje Criminal Court that when a hostile mob stormed the Macedonian parliament last April, he was severely attacked by several people whom he heard calling for his death.

Parim Olluri, a Kosovo journalist who runs the online newspaper Insajderi says has has come under vicious attack on social media during last two weeks, after he published an article criticising the Kosovo government for allocating money to families of men convicted in the "Kumanovo case".

A Greek court in Thessaloniki has aproved a Macedonian request for the extradition of two former secret police employees linked to the wiretapping scandal that brought down Macedonia's previous government.

The two former police officers, Goran Grujevski and Nikola Boskoski, have claimed that their lives might be in danger if they are extradited to Macedonia.

Several hundred people led by Gruevski and other high-ranking VMRO DPMNE party members protested on Tuesday amid a heavy police presence in front of the Skopje Criminal Court, where the suspects who were arrested in the morning were taken before a judge.

Police on Tuesday morning detained Cavkov, the former head of the uniformed police, and several VMRO DPMNE MPs over the storming of parliament in April.

They are being charged by the Organised Crime Prosecution with serious crimes against the state.