Macedonian Interior Minister Mitko Cavkov informed on Thursday that overnight police officers carried out coordinated raids at 28 locations across the country, including in the Tutunsuz mosque in the capital Skopje, and detained nine persons. Another 27 are under warrant for arrest, in relation with membership in foreign military or paramilitary organizations, under a new law passed recently mainly to prevent Muslim youths from joining the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Minister Cavkov said that the raid was planned since September 2014, and the Interior Ministry spent the time to collect evidence for the involvement of the group in recruiting members into foreign militant groups. About 130 Macedonian citizens are believed to have joined foreign militant groups, and 16 have been killed while fighting, Minister Cavkov said. Several of those who are detained already fought in Syria, travelling through Turkey, and came back to Macedonia. The detained are aged between 19 and 49 years. During the search, police confiscated computers, phones, a gas pistol and financial receipts.

The Interior Minister informed that a total of 28 searches were conducted overnight, 21 of them in Skopje, four locations are in Gostivar and one each in Tetovo, Kumanovo and Struga. The locations included private homes, as well as offices of a humanitarian and an NGO group.

One of those detained is alleged by local media to be the imam of the Tutunsuz mosque in Skopje. The Macedonian Islamic Community has had a history of divisions, with imams declaring themselves out of control from the leadership of the community, and this imam, Rexhep Memishi, was considered to be one of them. The Interior Ministry didn't give information about the identity of those who are charged, except for Minister Cavkov saying that they are all Macedonian citizens, of different ethnic groups. Albanians, Turks, Bosniaks, some of the Roma and a small part of ethnic Macedonians are the main Muslim communities in Macedonia.

The United States Embassy in Macedonia issued a press release welcoming the police operation.

In 2012 a suspected Islamist group killed five Christian Macedonians, four of them youths, in an apparent attempt to spark a wider confrontation just before Easter.