Are there criteria for arrests: Police as an alienated center of power, handcuffs and spectacle at the prosecutor's whim

By: Amina Čorbo-Zećo

The State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), the FUP, cantonal MUP departments, acting on orders from various prosecutors, release footage of numerous arrests, and often it seems they operate as alienated centers of power directly linked to the current political leadership, Patria writes.

Without established criteria, some arrests pass without pompous media fanfare, while in other cases cameras are installed even before the police arrive at the scene.

The latest major operations were conducted under the supervision of the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office, and in three operations carried out on the orders of this Prosecutor's Office, 31 people were arrested in the month of November alone. Among those arrested are former ministers, municipal chiefs, deans, municipal officials, company owners, professors…

Arrested, of course in front of cameras, were former state minister and mayor of Novi Grad municipality Damir Hadžić, former councilor in Novi Grad and cantonal representative Esed Radeljaš, assistant to the mayor of Novi Grad municipality Jasmina Horo, former ombudsman in this municipality Nedžada Kapetanović…

Arrested were former Minister of Interior of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Alija Delimustafić, Samira Skorupan, Muamer Pita, Hajrudin Omerbegović, Suada Hadžić, Nihad Druškić, Muhamed Hadžiomerović, Emir Karača, Edina Mutevelić, Lejla Cerić, Kemo Kapur, Edin Banović, Jusuf Škrijelj, Pero Vuković, Zoran Lončar, Amirela Lončar, Hamdo Spahić, Mirsad Delimustafić, Izet Musić, and a warrant has been issued for former judge Lejla Fazlagić, who is in Croatia.

Without entering into whether they are guilty or not, the manner of arrest often creates the impression that people are convicted in advance, before the courts deliver a verdict! We have no established criteria for who gets handcuffed and who does not…

For example, it is interesting that we have not seen a single recording of the major operation and arrest of 10 people on charges of war crimes in Orašje. The Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina informed journalists that several former members of the Croatian Defense Council, the HVO Military Police, and police structures were deprived of their liberty on charges of committing war crimes against victims of Serbian ethnicity in the Orašje area.

The Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina confirmed that the following were deprived of their liberty: Đuro Matuzović (1952), Ivo Oršolić (1952), Tado Oršolić (1960), Marko Dominković (1962), Joso Nedić (1956), Marko Baotić (1948), Marko Blažanović (1955), Mato Živković (1964), Anto Živković (1969), and Stijepo Đurić (1965), but we did not see the recordings.

Old practice

SIPA had already conducted several operations across Bosnia and Herzegovina in previous years, in which, for example, more than 30 former members of the Army of Republika Srpska were arrested, suspected of abusing and killing hundreds of Bosniak civilians from 1992 to 1995.

During or after the arrests, back in 2014, not a single photograph or video recording of the suspects was released.

The arrest of Milkan Gojković, who is charged with being one of the closest associates of the most monstrous criminal Veselin Vlahović Batko, who raped and killed dozens of Bosniak civilians in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Grbavica in 1992, could not be seen by the public.

At the end of November 2014, SIPA also arrested 12 people suspected of war crimes committed in July 1992 against victims of Bosniak ethnicity in the Prijedor municipality area, in the village of Zecovi, but the public also does not know what those who killed more than 100 Bosniaks look like.

Prosecutor's orders

At the beginning of December 2014, on the orders of the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes of Serbia, 14 people were arrested, suspected of the war crime in Štrpci and Višegrad in 1992, when at least 20 victims, citizens of Serbia and Montenegro of Bosniak ethnicity, one person of Croatian ethnicity, and one person of Afro-Asian origin were abducted from a train on the Belgrade-Bar line and later killed in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The public does not know what these suspects for monstrous murders look like either, Patria writes.

On the other hand, the internet is flooded with footage of the handcuffed arrest of Šemsudin Mehmedović, a Bosniak representative in the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who was suspected and then acquitted of charges of hiding weapons in the Tešanj municipality area.

Cameras went every time, together with SIPA's special forces, but also with the special forces of the Federal Police Administration during the arrests of members of the Salafi movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The spectacular arrest of Kemal Čaušević, former director of the Indirect Taxation Authority of Bosnia and Herzegovina (UIO), then Jerko Ivanović Lijanović, federal minister of agriculture, and Milorad Bahilj, minister of trade in the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the SIPA and FUP raid on Gornja Maoča, were recorded and shown to the public…

The spectacular arrest of Hamdija Lipovača, former prime minister of the Una-Sana Canton, was also recorded and shown to the public. He was arrested by FUP members on Wednesday, December 17, 2014, for alleged abuse of office back in 2007.

His children still feel the consequences of the arrest today!

Waited for TV cameras

Federal special forces waited to carry out the operation until TV cameras appeared.

Also, if you type the name Živko Budimir, President of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, into YouTube, you can watch footage of his arrest and detention.

No one disputes that the police and judiciary should do their job. On the contrary. Every operation and verdict against crime, atrocities… should be supported, welcomed, and these pillars of law enforcement in Bosnia and Herzegovina should be assisted in their work.

However, what are called facts cannot be so easily overlooked.

SIPA and the FUP should do their job professionally, and for that to happen, there must be no double standards.

Otherwise, we will continue to have "our" and "your" criminals, perpetrators… where, clearly at the whim of politics, we watch suspects being led away in handcuffs, and when it comes to others, there is silence, only a "spoonful" of information, mostly with initials.