The Judge Who Sues You Also Judges You: Kaplan and Stolac Left at the (Dis)cretion of Čović's Police and Judiciary

How can Salmir Kaplan and ten other individuals, against whom the Čapljina Police Department filed criminal charges with the HNK Prosecutor's Office, expect the law to be applied without national and political bias, knowing that the leadership of the police and judiciary in this canton consists entirely of Dragan Čović's people, not to mention the crucial fact that the retrograde policy of HDZ BiH orchestrated the incident on October 2, election day, for which they now must answer, writes the Patria news agency.

Salimir Kaplan, Ahmet Ljubović, Demir Mahmutčehajić, Nihad Bajramović, Amer Beča, Nermin Bise, Bećir Zukić, Denis Pirija, Adnan Baljić, Adis Tucaković and Salko Baljić are suspected of “criminal acts of misappropriation and destruction of election materials and physical attacks on members of the Municipal Election Commission.”

Adding to this Čović's statement that he “sees Stolac as Croatian territory,” and that ministers from neighboring Croatia were called in for help, whose mere arrival in this Herzegovinian town directly interfered in the internal affairs of a neighboring, sovereign, and independent state, exerting pressure, even a layman can see what outcome of the trial can be expected.

Furthermore, the leader of HDZ BiH, who at any cost does not want Stolac to be taken over after 26 years by forces that desire progress, not ethnically clean territories belonging exclusively to one people, in this case Croats (read: HDZ BiH), has already told Kaplan, even before the court verdict and evidence, that he has “already ended his political career.”

What does Čović know that the rest of the country does not?

The Minister of the Interior of HNK is Slađan Bevanda, the Commissioner of the Interior of HNK is Ilija Lasić, the Chief Prosecutor of the HNK Prosecutor's Office is Zdenko Kovač, and the Chief of the Čapljina Police Department is Mario Zovko. All of them are Čović's trusted men.

It should come as no surprise that their political boss, who certainly has experience with trials and the phantom disappearance of documentation from the court, has dictated how long Kaplan and the other ten individuals should be sentenced.

- My defense against the physical attack at the polling station on October 2 is being processed by the competent authorities, and they will decide based on evidence that, in my case, will not disappear during transport from one prosecutor's office to another, as happened during the proceedings against Dragan Čović, Kaplan said.

Due to the fact that the political atmosphere in Stolac has reached a boiling point, and that Čović wants to seal the so-called HZHB through the story of Stolac, and that the Initiative for Stolac and Salmir Kaplan got in the way of that plan, the judicial process should be taken over by the Prosecutor's Office of BiH, and the investigation should be conducted by SIPA.

As it stands, Kaplan and his team have been left at the “mercy and discretion” of Čović's police and judiciary, which operate on the principle of “the judge who sues you also judges you.”