The Association of Journalists in Macedonia claims that the attitude of the institutions is completely unacceptable and that their aim is to intimidate journalists and encourage self-censorship when covering certain court hearings.
Yesterday, Mahmuti and Uka, as stated in the statement by the AJM, were detained for six hours at a police station, on the grounds that they had been filming the judges during the trial. After releasing them from the police station, in a conversation with representatives of the Association, they said that the filming of the judges was just an excuse so they could be questioned because they had filmed members of the police in front of the court building.
The AJM says that the dilemma remains whether the police had a warrant for detaining the journalists because, as they claim from the Association, yesterday the Public Prosecutor’s Office (PPO) told them that they had not issued a warrant, however, today the Prosecution claimed the opposite.
“We ask, what contributed to the change of attitude from the Public Prosecutor’s Office”, said the AJM.
