Clarification from the owner of Hotel Hills: Authorities were immediately notified about the passports, guests understood the situation

(Patria) - The owner of Hotel Hills, Saljo Mrkulić, confirmed to the media that the passports of 48 tourists from Israel were in a bag that fell into a trash can. At that moment, no one was at the reception desk, so no one checked the trash can.

As confirmed for Politicki.ba, the guests whose passports went missing are not Jewish at all. In fact, they are Israeli Arabs, mostly Palestinians.

"What does that have to do with anything! You rushed and wrote, without even asking us. They could have been of any nationality. That is not important to us!" Saljo Mrkulić, the hotel owner, reacted angrily.

He said that the police were immediately informed about everything.

"These are our regular guests; we have a group every week. The passports were brought to us in a bag, they were under the counter, where other items were as well, and they accidentally fell into the bin. No one noticed. We reacted immediately upon the report. The guests understood the circumstances. But you reacted immediately. You didn't even ask us!" the owner continues.

He explains that the hotel has had clientele from Israel for years, that they are regular guests and that they regularly return.

Mrkulić says that only those passports were lost and that it is not true that other guests experienced the same thing.

"The authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina were immediately and thoroughly informed about everything, and they are doing their job," concluded the owner of Hotel Hills in an interview with Politicki.ba.

The Director of the Service for Foreigners' Affairs, Žarko Laketa, said that the tourists should be heading home as early as tomorrow.

The hotel also provided video from surveillance cameras that recorded the moment when a white bag fell into the trash can.