site.btaHearing on Kocani Nightclub Fire Case Rescheduled for December 2

The next hearing in the case concerning the deadly fire at the Pulse nightclub in Kocani will take place on December 2, Judge Diana Gruevska-Ilievska said on Tuesday. The hearing, originally scheduled for Wednesday, was postponed because the defendants needed additional time to review the final version of the indictment.

On March 13, a fire at the Pulse nightclub in Kocani claimed 62 lives and injured nearly 200 people. Around 1,500 people were attending a concert by the popular band DNK. The ensuing panic when the fire broke out has delayed the evacuation of the building. Fifteen of the injured were transported to Bulgaria by Spartan military transport aircraft and ambulances from the Sofia Emergency Medical Centre and were hospitalized in Sofia, Varna and Plovdiv, where they later recovered. On March 18, more than 600 Bulgarian volunteers donated blood for the victims.

On June 13, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of North Macedonia indicted 34 individuals and three legal entities in connection with the tragedy.

At Tuesday’s hearing, the defendants were expected to state whether they would plead guilty. Their lawyers, however, objected that the accused had not been acquainted with the final version of the indictment, after the bill of indictment against the owner of the company responsible for the club’s security was added to the case at the previous hearing. The indictment is to be served on them later on Tuesday, but as time is needed to examine the document, the session was postponed.

It took the court more than half an hour to record the names of the lawyers and the representatives of the injured parties and of the families of the deceased, who declared that they were joining the prosecution and would file claims for damages in separate civil proceedings.

The victims' parents have staged March of the Angels rallies in Kocani every Saturday since the tragedy. On November 15, they staged a protest in Skopje, calling on the public to join and support them in their demands for justice. Later on that day, thousands of citizens joined the march.

On November 18, the leaders of two opposition parties in North Macedonia said that they will submit an initiative to establish a parliamentary inquiry committee to conduct an independent investigation into the case.