The Court of Appeal-Skopje confirmed the acquittal for the former director of the Security and Counterintelligence Authority Sasho Mijalkov and members of the former police unit "Alfi" in the "Torture" case, after the previous acquittal was handed down by the Criminal Court.

"The Council of the Court of Appeals-Skopje determined that the first-instance verdict is clear, understandable, eligible for examination, does not contain significant violations of the provisions of the Civil Code, and the factual situation is correctly determined, while the first-instance court determined a different factual situation from the one presented in the submitted and specified indictment of the Basic Public Prosecutor's Office Skopje", the Court of Appeal's reasoning reads.

The "Torture" case, opened by the former Special Public Prosecutor's Office (SPO), refers to the spectacular on-camera arrest of the leader of the United for Macedonia party Ljube Boskoski on June 6, 2011, after the holding of the parliamentary elections. According to the indictment, there was torture during the arrest of Boskoski and that the whole procedure caused mental suffering. Political revanchism was cited as the motive in the indictment.

"Based on the collected evidence, a well-founded suspicion arose that all those involved, except of course the victim, were keenly interested in the entire public seeing the unscrupulousness of a part of the police force - alphas, in carrying out the arrest of a political opponent of the party in power, and which in during that period he managed the police. In the criminal - legal dictionary it is called simply - Torture. Such behavior is punishable by all international standards." he said the prosecutor of the former SJO, Fatime Fetai, in 2016, when the indictment was announced.

In addition to Mijalkov, the former commander of "Alfi" was also accused in this court case. Ivica Anchevski-Puki and five members of the police unit - Novica Stankovski, Petar Milosevski, Philip Atanasov, Jovan Bocevski и Metush Shabani.