The public expected answers, but the Prosecutor's Office and the MUP of Canton Sarajevo lost them when the 'driver is guilty' ploy fell through!

Written by: Rasim Belko

The leading figures of the Prosecutor's Office and the MUP of Canton Sarajevo were expected to provide more information, but instead we got a repetition of the well-known general elements of the investigation, which we have all chewed over excessively without those elements offering any answers. The press conference held by the Chief Prosecutor of Canton Sarajevo, Meliha Dugalija, and the Commissioner of the MUP of Canton Sarajevo, Fatmir Hajdarević, was clearly not convened so that citizens, who have taken to the streets multiple times, could get a clearer picture of what happened, the direction of the investigation, and who the perpetrators might be.

What the role of Commissioner Hajdarević was at the press conference will remain unknown, because what he read from the paper was of no interest to either the journalists present or the general public.

From Chief Prosecutor Dugalija we heard all sorts of things, but nothing of essential importance, as she explained what she could not say, how the investigation was initiated, in which directions, what orders were issued… Those are questions she should clarify to her superiors; we are interested in how close her prosecutors' investigation is to uncovering the real truth about everything.

Prosecutor Dugalija should know that the public in Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina is not interested in details about how they work, that the public in BiH is not a court to assess the legality of evidence, but that this public fears not only injustice and the possibility that the tram accident will remain yet another unresolved killing and serious injury, but also fears the possibility that such an accident could happen again, with perhaps even more severe consequences.

Everything we knew two days after the accident, Dugalija repeated to us on the 13th day, with abundant statements about how they are doing something, seizing, ordering, interrogating, conducting expert analyses…

Thus, the Chief Prosecutor of Canton Sarajevo says about the suspicion against the tram driver and the proposal for custody: “We relied on the evidence at that moment and the expert statements at that stage, and based on that we arrived at the qualification.” Let us recall, the Prosecutor's Office of Canton Sarajevo, based on evidence and expert analyses known to them, charged the tram driver with using the tram as a weapon with the intent to cause an accident. They qualify it differently, but it is a form of terrorism.

The court flatly rejected this because the experts were contradictory, and judging by the fact that Dugalija has not offered the evidence she speaks of even today, it casts doubt on the work of the Prosecutor's Office of Canton Sarajevo and the investigation that has so far led nowhere. The fact that they have not yet questioned the director of GRAS because they do not know whether to question him as a witness or as a suspect confirms suspicions about the political suitability of an investigation that, by all accounts, does not want to burden its political patrons with anything.

And all suspicions were best illustrated by Dugalija's sentence: “The public's stance has also changed.” Or in translation, the Prosecutor's Office of Canton Sarajevo is more concerned about the alleged change in public opinion, although I do not know in which direction, and they are not concerned that they almost sent a man to custody with a qualification that was not justified, with evidence and expert analyses that are in conflict and, according to the decision of the Cantonal Court, clearly do not hold up.

One example precisely shows the difference in the meaning of preliminary investigation results. In Sarajevo, prosecutors proposed detaining the driver based on preliminary investigation results, and those results were not accurate, as the Court established. In Spain, two days after the accident on January 18, 2026, preliminary results showed clear causes of the accident.

Thus, the Spanish did not arrest the driver, their experts did not conduct analyses as instructed, nor did their investigators investigate something that should confirm someone's story. Prosecutors in Spain were engaged in searching for evidence and the truth and achieved results in just two days.

In Sarajevo, everyone in the chain responsible for the investigation and establishing the truth is focused on finding a way to ensure the truth is never discovered, because there are many in the chain for whom such an outcome would be acceptable.

While we watched the youth's banners bearing victims of the system who did not receive justice and truth, an insolent and hypocritical reaction came from the Association of Prosecutors of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who turn every criticism into an “attack on the judiciary.”

“The Association of Prosecutors of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina gives full support to colleagues who work daily on protecting citizens' rights and fighting crime. Prosecutors play a key role in preserving justice and upholding the law, and their independence from political influence is of essential importance,” state the prosecutors of the Federation, but they do not answer how we can have so many unresolved cases and unexplained deaths.

Those prosecutors do not ask their Sarajevo colleagues why no one is conducting an expert analysis of the tram that, for inexplicable reasons, was involved in the accident in Ilidža, and witnesses of that event claim that if there had been no tram in front, it would have been worse than at Marijin Dvor. But for them, any criticism is equivalent to an attack on the judiciary.

And that is why, when we summarize the attempt to inform the public about an investigation that concerns justice but also our safety in public transport, it is quite clear that the public did not get answers because the Prosecutor's Office and the MUP of Canton Sarajevo lost them when the 'driver is guilty' ploy fell through.

A simple question also arises: will the death of Erdoan Morankić, the suffering of Ella Jovanović, and other injured persons become yet another decades-long case where the investigation has stalled in the triangle of police, politics, and the prosecutor's office. For now, that is the only visible trace!