North Macedonia

ENTRY INTO FORCE of the European Convention on Human Rights

10 April 1997

Number of implemented cases*

257

Examples

Compensation and official apology for victim of CIA torture and secret “rendition”

Khaled El-Masri’s unimaginable ordeal began when he was detained by FYR Macedonian border officials. He was handed over to US intelligence agents, who transferred him to a secret prison in Afghanistan. The European court recognised Khaled as a victim of “extraordinary rendition” and awarded him damages. FYR Macedonia apologised and took steps to prevent future such human rights violations.

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Failure to investigate alleged brutality against man trying to help the police

Cvetan Trajkoski tried to report a dangerous situation to the police. He was then allegedly beaten by a group of officers – apparently because he had parked his car in the wrong place. The European court ruled that the authorities had failed to properly investigate the alleged attack. This and other cases led to reforms to ensure proper investigations of alleged police brutality.

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Failure to investigate alleged police violence

After a row started in a bar in Štip, everyone present was taken into police custody. According to Pejrusan Jasar, once he was in a police cell he was severely beaten by a police officer. Mr Jasar lodged a criminal complaint but the public prosecutor took no steps to investigate. The European court ruled this had violated Mr Jasar’s basic rights – leading to a series of reforms.

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Court system reformed after justice delayed for over a decade

Aleksandar Čaminski was attacked by five people. Charges were brought against the suspects, but it took 11 years for them to be brought to trial. The European court found that this delay was unreasonably long. Along with other cases, this helped bring about significant changes to cut the length of proceedings in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

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* This figure includes all judgments and decisions from the European Court of Human Rights (including friendly settlements) concerning which the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has decided that all necessary follow-up measures have been taken. Source: the database of the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the ECHR, HUDOC-EXEC.