Two years ago, on 27th of March 2013, in the ditch at the intersection Hipodrom, the body of journalist and owner of the weekly “Fokus” Nikola Mladenov and his car that went off the road on the section Skopje – Veles were found.
The event caused shock and storm among the journalists and the public this electoral spring, which to this day do not cease because many issues related to the death of the Bard of Macedonian journalism remained unanswered.
The case was closed or, rather, put ad acta as a traffic accident. But the public has not learned what Mladenov did that night, where he was, whether he met someone and what remains as a cause for suspicion and unconfirmed speculation, where his cell phone is and how come it was never found.
Criminal Court and the Prosecution conducted two inspections of the site – the second after public pressure.
Several months after the accident, i.e. 10th of July 2013, at an official press conference, which was attended by the Public Prosecutor Marko Zvrlevski, head of the Skopje Public Prosecution Gordana Geshkoska and Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska, Mladenov’s death was declared an accident and was announced that there is no evidence indicating that the accident in which Mladenov was killed is the result of a criminal act.
According to the prosecution, the cause of the accident was “improper behavior”, i.e. finding of the experts showed “movement by inadequate trajectory at a speed of 142 kilometers per hour” at the moment when Mladenov approached the intersection at Hipodrom.
However, the mystery of Mladenov’s mobile phone remained unclear. Prosecution said the phone was not found. The exact time of death was also not determined.
SDSM leader Zoran Zaev, at a press conference dedicated to the intercepted calls to journalists, said that the materials in his possession show that the most wiretapped member of the seventh power in the state was none other than Nikola Mladenov.
Zaev submitted the folder with the materials to his family.
He announced that there are conversations for Mladenov’s death in the recordings he owns, which, as he said, will be published.
When killed, Nikola Mladenov had 49 years.
He was born on 10th of March 1964 in Skopje.
As a young man he worked as an actor, and in the mid-1980s, he joined the newspaper “Young Fighter”, where he became one of the leaders of the democratic process in the former Federal Republic of Macedonia. After “Young Fighter”, he founded the radio “Libertas”.
In 1995, Mladenov founded the weekly “Fokus”, the first free and independent newspaper in Macedonia, under the motto “weekly of the internal and of the foreign enemies.”
We still remember the maxim of Mladenov, which reflects his journalistic engagement and critical and uncompromising attitude towards the government, any government that was the head of state since independence: “We want a society of free people, which offers equal opportunities for all, they want a gathering of invertebrates that succeeds because of blind obedience to party tribe. And here there is no compromise! “(16th of November 2011).
And after his death, with little interruption, the weekly “Fokus” continues working.
