How We Ended Up in Court Over Someone Else's Millions

A court process is underway against Patria, initiated by Semir Halilović, son of Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina General Sefer Halilović, at the Municipal Court in Sarajevo due to alleged defamation of his character and deeds. The younger Halilović is a former representative in the Sarajevo Canton Assembly – as they say – representing BPS, a political party founded by his father a year after the war in 1996. By the will of the citizens after October 7th, that party is no longer parliamentary.

The news article published on Patria in August last year, referring to official reports from the Audit Office of the Institutions of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, discusses taxpayer money that BPS ministers for veterans' affairs had been paying into the accounts of dubious foundations for years from the Sarajevo Canton Budget, including the foundation founded by Semir Halilović.

According to the lawsuit, Semir Halilović was so shaken by Patria's article that, as I recount the findings of the court expert read in the courtroom of the Sarajevo court, Halilović experienced intense mental pain for ten days, moderate distress for 20 days, and then occasional mental pain for several more days whenever he thought of the article in question or when a colleague reminded him of this journalistic audacity.

In short, for those who have just turned on the internet, Patria published that two cantonal ministers for veterans' affairs, both from BPS, first Faid Hećo and then Muharem Fišo, allocated more than a million KM of the budget to the Foundation for the Protection of Historical Facts "Justice" and the Foundation for the Preservation of Historical Heritage "Truth". Our mistake, primarily mine as the editor, which is why we found ourselves in the dock, is that we published that these foundations were founded by the general's son Semir, and consequently, that taxpayer money, or a large part of it, flowed into the Halilovićs' pockets.

The truth, of course, from Semir Halilović's perspective, is quite different – he admits that he did found the "Justice" foundation in 2013, which did receive more than a million KM from the Budget to protect historical facts, but, as the young Halilović explained to the judge, he withdrew from the foundation very quickly, and historical facts continued to be protected at the Foundation without him, albeit with generous funding from the Ministries for Veterans' Affairs headed by Halilović's party colleagues. For example, former Minister for Veterans' Affairs of Sarajevo Canton, Muharem Fišo, who allocated money to the foundations, is a member of the BPS Presidency, as is Semir Halilović. Therefore, Halilović does not dispute that the "Justice" Foundation received millions in budget funds allocated by his party colleague, nor does he dispute that he founded the foundation, but claims he was only a member of the Foundation at the beginning, and when the business got going, Halilović withdrew and things continued to function without him. Halilović also does not dispute that the minister from his party, Fišo, allocated more than 200,000 KM to a newly established foundation with a similar name, "Truth", and with almost the same people in leadership from the previous foundation, just two months after its establishment in 2017, but claims that he has absolutely no connection with that foundation either, and that the newspaper reports are a form of personal hatred towards him.

During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, thousands of soldiers went to the front lines every day without receiving grants from the Ministry for Veterans' Affairs. Many lost limbs and their lives. At the very least, they were left with health problems. To this day, almost three decades later, these veterans are on the streets, seeking any security from the state. Most generals, during this time, are "protecting historical facts" and "preserving historical heritage", and in doing so, they are taking public money. Why don't, for example, the numerous ministries or government bodies, which citizens pay for anyway, do that job?

The name of the foundation that Halilović founded and then withdrew from is vague: which historical facts exactly does the Foundation protect, including those that after the war hundreds of demobilized soldiers committed suicide due to extreme poverty, while the Federation annually spends around 570 million KM on 1,601 associations and foundations for "protection of historical facts" and "preservation of historical heritage." Or does it protect the facts that about 360,000 soldiers emerged from the war, and today there are more than half a million on various lists. Bosnia and Herzegovina is probably the only country where the number of soldiers does not decrease after the war but increases.

I do not think journalists are sacred cows. On the contrary, the profession is too often abused. But it is quite disappointing that we are proving the intentions of the editorial office in an article about the spending of public funds, while at the same time the judiciary is not investigating how a certain foundation received and spent a very concrete million or more KM of taxpayer money.

If you allow me, I propose to the BiH judiciary to conduct two processes; one in which Patria's responsibility in the article in question will be determined, and the second in which it will be determined how and to whom BPS ministers distributed money intended for the veteran population and what Halilović's role was in all of this.