World > Europe > Officials Given Rare Sentence in Deadly Macedonian Club Fire
An appeals court convicted five government officials on Thursday and sentenced them to prison for their roles in a nightclub fire in Skopje, North Macedonia, in 2012, that killed 27 people and injured more than 200.
The ruling was unusually severe: lower-level civil servants had not been imprisoned in Macedonia for deaths caused by negligence and violations of safety procedures. Thursday’s decision marked the first time civil servants had been convicted for their roles in deaths from a fire, which is relatively common in Macedonia given the lax enforcement of safety procedures in buildings.
Last year, a similar number of Macedonians — 27 — died in another building, a hotel, that was set on fire in the southern city of Ohrid.
The February 2012 fire in Skopje broke out during a party at Club Kaval. Flames racing through the crowds killed most of the victims, many of them women and teenagers, as they sought escape. Investigators blamed faulty wiring and negligence by officials.
Nine people in total have been charged in relation to the fire, and a 10th died after being diagnosed with cancer resulting from inhaling noxious fumes that day.
The verdicts came after appeals courts in 2015 convicted the surviving owner of the club, Egor Vovchevski, of causing the fire and sentenced him to five years in prison. A lower court, however, in August 2017 ordered a retrial after judges ruled that witnesses had not been heard properly.
Mr. Vovchevski was found guilty again last month, and was sentenced this week to nine years in jail for endangering human lives and involvement in organized crime, according to the office of the prosecutor general in Skopje.
In addition to the five officials imprisoned on Thursday, an auxiliary prosecutor was also sentenced to probation.
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