Judiciary: When Producing Chaos Becomes a Strategy

By Sead OMERAGIĆ

Alija Delimustafić was first arrested on November 11, 2016. Along with 11 other people, he is suspected of real estate fraud and illicit enrichment amounting to millions. He was remanded in custody for two months. Operation Justice was the name of this operation. A name that promises, but everything else was half-justice.

A month later, on December 10, his detention was lifted.

An international warrant was issued for him on December 20, 2016, as he had left Bosnia and Herzegovina. The next day, he was arrested in Croatia near Karlovac. He was handed over to the BiH authorities on January 5, 2017.

At the proposal of the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office, on February 20, 2017, the Cantonal Court extended the detention for three months for Alija Delimustafić and two other individuals.

The Cantonal Court in Sarajevo will then release Delimustafić and those two individuals. The KS Prosecutor's Office will appeal the Cantonal Court's decision on March 30. The Supreme Court of the Federation, deciding on the appeal, granted the appeal of the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office on April 11 against the Cantonal Court's decision to release Alija Delimustafić and two other individuals.

On April 14, Delimustafić was remanded in custody for three months.

In the end, the Supreme Court of the FBiH stated that the Cantonal Court had not acted according to instructions, nor had it explained from which evidence it derived and what specific actions Delimustafić had committed.

I have deliberately listed all these judicial actions. It is good if you are not dizzy from these spectacular maneuver arrests, releases, and detention extensions. Six months of these judicial maneuvers have passed, and an indictment against the primary suspect Alija Delimustafić has not yet been filed, and this is becoming a serious problem.

If this is how things can be done in a case under public scrutiny, the question is what happens to people who have nothing but their bare lives.

The judiciary is the foundation of a state's functioning. If a state produces chaos, then it is only a small step for that chaos to be legalized.

In this case of Alija Delimustafić alone, the public has the opportunity to see what live psychiatry looks like: left - right, there and here, behind bars and out of bars. If it were the animal kingdom or some zoo, animal protection associations would probably protest. In this human zoo, judicial-prosecutorial maneuvers are becoming a problem, but they are treated as almost normal.

If people are forced to look at bars, it becomes irrelevant who is inside and who is outside.

Producing chaos and rocking the boat we are sailing on is increasingly becoming a strategy, and less and less a performance in which both the audience and the actors have long felt equally lost.

If a state is functional and efficient, it becomes a privilege, and by no means a problem.