The prison in Shtip was involved in an unusual incident where, according to authorities, guards helped an inmate locate drugs thrown over the prison wall while claiming they were searching for a watch allegedly taken by a dog named “Cece.”
According to Aleksandar Pandov, Director of the Directorate for the Execution of Sanctions, on February 20, a car reached the second prison wall, and a person threw a package containing narcotics into the prison yard. Security camera footage shows two inmates, identified by their initials as Zh. Zh. and R. K., searching the yard while one was talking on the phone, a violation of prison rules.
The package was later found to contain 35 grams of white powder suspected to be cocaine and 50 grams of marijuana. Pandov stated that several prison guards, instead of intervening, assisted the inmates with flashlights to search for the “lost item.”
“When asked by the prison director what they were searching for, the commander and the officers claimed that the inmate had an expensive watch taken by the dog ‘Cece’ while playing in the yard. According to them, the watch—unregistered in the prison—was worth over 1,000 euros and was lost during the dog’s chase across the yard,” Pandov said in a media briefing.
A disciplinary commission was formed, but it ruled that the officers had not violated any rules. Two commission members voted for disciplinary action, while three others declared the officers innocent.
Pandov also revealed that one of the inmates had been serving a sentence for over 20 years for multiple criminal offenses and is a well-known figure in the underground scene in North Macedonia. He warned about the high level of corruption within the penitentiary system.
“About 50 percent of prison guards in some institutions are corrupt. Inmates are wealthy, connected to drug and migrant smuggling gangs, and are not hesitant to offer thousands of euros for phones or other favors,” he said.
Pandov added that nearly 1,000 phones had been confiscated from Macedonian prisons in the last nine months, compared to 26 in Croatia during the entire year of 2023 and 51 in Kosovo in 2024.
He stated that the system could only be reformed by removing corrupt employees one by one. “As long as they feel untouchable, we will continue to have phones, drugs, and prohibited items in prisons,” he emphasized.
Pandov also expressed doubts about the installation of cell phone signal jammers, mentioning that most prisons are located near civilian areas, and such a measure would also affect residents living nearby.
