Skopje_ A cameraman was beaten by police while he was recording officers as they searched a vehicle carrying an MP who was involved in Tuesday’s brawl in parliament, local media reported Wednesday.
“Some of the members of the Alpha unit [undercover special police force] attacked our cameraman. They took the tape and started beating him”, the editor of Alsat TV, Muhamed Zekiri, told journalists at the hospital where the injured man, Igor Ljubovcevski, had been taken.
The incident, involving MP Sadula Duraku, occurred near the pay-toll point on the highway between the capital, Skopje, and the town of Tetovo after Ljubovcevski had refused to surrender his tape to a police officer.
Ljubovcevski was allowed to leave after the beating, Zekiri said, adding that an x-ray at the hospital showed he had two cracked ribs from the beating.
Police spokesman Ivo Kotevski condemned any ill-treatment of media workers.
“We urge Alsat to file an immediate complaint, and we will investigate the case. The perpetrators will be rigorously punished”, Kotevski told local media.
Sources from Duraku’s ethnic Albanian opposition party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, told media that the police on the highway where the cameraman was beaten had tried to arrest their MP.
Duraku was among MPs involved in Tuesday’s brawl that raised tension inside and in the vicinity of the parliament building between the deputies and activists from the ethnic Albanian parties in the country.
“The police at the place of the incident tried to determine the identity of two people in a vehicle, and did not make an attempt to arrest the DUI deputy”, Kotevski told the media.
Meanwhile, the DUI has decided to freeze its participation in the parliament’s plenary sessions, and has called for the establishment of a special parliamentary commission to determine responsibility for Tuesday’s incidents.
After an emergency meeting, DUI leaders announced a protest in Skopje for Friday.
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