COMMITTEE ONLY NOW APPOINTED Can Lazić decide on appeals of police officers he harmed

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - After the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina finally appointed yesterday the new composition of the Police Officers Appeals Committee, which has not existed since May, and this has also called into question the competitions for recruitment of police officers, decisions on disciplinary proceedings, and the status of numerous police officers, the question arises as to how certain Committee members will participate in decision-making and whether they are in a conflict of interest.

Namely, Veljko Lazić from the Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina was appointed as Deputy Chairman of the Committee. According to information revealed to us by sources from the Border Police of BiH, Lazić was appointed on May 21, 2021, as Chairman of the Commission for Filling Vacant Positions of Police Officers of the Border Police of BiH through promotion to the rank of 'Senior Inspector'.

"Namely, Mr. Veljko Lazić was the Chairman of the Commission that decided in the procedure of promotion to the rank of 'Senior Inspector' in the Border Police of BiH. Therefore, I am interested in how Mr. Lazić will, in this case, decide on the appeals of police officers, which were submitted by injured police officers against the decision made by Lazić himself. It could now happen as per the folk saying 'The judge who accuses you is the judge who judges you'," states our source.

Lazić was proposed to the Committee by the Director of the Border Police of BiH, Zoran Galić, and the Minister of Security of BiH, Selmo Cikotić, accepted one of the two proposed names.

Our source claims that Lazić should recuse himself from the decision-making process on appeals concerning the disputed promotion to the rank of 'Senior Inspector' carried out in the Border Police of BiH in May 2021. Incidentally, Lazić is also the Head of the Operations Directorate in the Border Police of BiH.

Regarding the promotion from May 2021, when the mandate of the old Committee composition expired, our source states that "points were rigged".

"The Promotion Commission, which scored candidates in the said competition, rated a police officer with 25 (twenty-five) years of police experience lower than a police officer with 11 (eleven) years of work experience. Namely, the Rulebook on the Procedure for Promotion of Police Officers in Police Bodies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Article 10 (Evaluation), among other things, states that each Commission member evaluates the candidate's professional biography with a score from 1 to 5, and that besides educational qualifications, 'Greater relevant professional experience' is also important, which apparently is not relevant for the Commission headed by Lazić," our sources state.

The injured applicants submitted complaints to the Appeals Committee, but there was no one to decide on them.