Minister Mektić at the head of the protest, calls on citizens to gather in front of the Court and Prosecutor's Office in Sarajevo

SARAJEVO, (Patria) – Minister of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina Dragan Mektić called on citizens to gather in front of the Court and Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina next week in Sarajevo, in response to the corruption scandal shaking the judiciary in the country.

„To save both the state and ourselves, it is necessary to overthrow this criminal HJPC. I propose a mass gathering of citizens next week in front of the Prosecutor's Office and Court of BiH (the seat of the HJPC), as a democratic form of pressure for resignations“, Mektić wrote on his Twitter account on Friday evening, as reported by the Patria agency.

„I will be at the head of that movement“, Minister Mektić stated.

The magazine Žurnal published an article about the involvement of the President of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milan Tegeltija, in a corruption scandal, in which he was supposed to influence the then Chief Prosecutor of Sarajevo Canton, Dalida Burzić, to expedite a criminal case, while Marko Pandža, an inspector of the Agency for Investigation and Protection of BiH (SIPA), took 2,000 KM from a businessman from Velika Kladuša for that service, noting that he would use the money to „shoe“ Tegeltija.

Tegeltija denied involvement in the affair, after which Žurnal also published a recording of a conversation between businessman from Velika Kladuša, Nermin Alešević, Tegeltija, and Pandža.

The conversations were recorded by Alešević, who has been waiting since 2017 for the Prosecutor's Office in Sarajevo to open an investigation against several politicians in BiH, for whom Alešević submitted documentation to the Prosecutor's Office that they had committed multiple criminal offenses.

The HJPC is the umbrella institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina that monitors the work of the courts and prosecutor's offices of Bosnia and Herzegovina.