What happened: The Sector for Internal Affairs Bitola and the Cybercrime and Digital Forensics
Department at the Ministry of Interior, in coordination with the Primary Public Prosecutor’s Office –
Bitola undertook measures and activities on grounds of a life-threatening post shared on the social
network Facebook by O.J. (40) from Bitola, i.e. on grounds of a reasonable suspicion that the person
committed the crime of “Endangering the Safety” under Article 144 from the Criminal Code of the
Republic North Macedonia.
On 14 January 2019, the person О.Ј. was invited to an official conversation at a police station,
whereupon, with the purpose of gathering evidence, several objects were also seized.
On 28 January 2019, criminal charges were pressed to PPO Bitola against O.J. (40) from Bitola for
having committed the criminal offence “Endangering the Safety” under Article 144 from the CC of
RNM. MOI qualified the criminal offence as a hate crime.
Date, time and place of incident: Precisely undetermined date and time, through the social network
Facebook.
Source of information: MOI’s daily newsletter.
Victim(s) involved: Undetermined.
Type of crime(s): Endangering the Safety (Article 144 paragraph 4, CC of RNM).
Perpetrators: One identified perpetrator (O.J. 40).
Brief description of the event with bias indicators: In this incident the bias motive is ethnicity, with
the bias indicators being:
1. Ethnicity – spreading hate speech and calling to and inciting violence through social
networks against different ethnic communities.
2. Pattern of previous incidents – inciting and spreading ethnic hatred and inciting violence
through social networks is becoming a very common manner of committing hate crimes.
Status of case: Identified perpetrator, criminal charges pressed.
Response of the local authorities: Proper criminal charges for the cited criminal offence (Article 144
Endangering the Safety). The criminal offence was qualified as a hate crime.
Impact on the victims and the community: These types of incidents call into question the general
safety in the country and the co-existence among different ethnic groups in society.
