SECRET CONNECTION Prosecutor Jolović and three long years: Closed the 'Icon Case', and well-timed the 'Debevec-Mehmedagić' case!

By Amina Čorbo-Zećo

Does anyone in Bosnia and Herzegovina remember the ‘icon case’? This is the case of another investigation in the proceedings against Milorad Dodik that was halted.

The Ukrainian icon, an artwork claimed to have been stolen in 2020, ended up with the then member of the Presidency of BiH, Dodik, who decided to gift the icon to Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister. Everything resulted in a diplomatic scandal, the opening of a case in the State Prosecutor's Office, and the return of the icon. Three years later, the case is closed.

It is interesting that the prosecutor in charge of this case was Bojana Jolović, the same prosecutor who is in charge of the Ranko Debevec and Osman Mehmedagić case. And in both cases, it took the prosecutor three years to make a final prosecutorial decision.

And in both cases, the prosecutor has, or does not have, evidence. In Dodik's case, she stated that there was no evidence, and in the Debevec and Mehmedagić case, that there was no evidence to prove that the wiretapping was done legally.

But why am I writing all this? Solely because since the arrest of Debevec and Mehmedagić, the public has been asking if these two cases are connected? It is impossible to separate them, if we consider that Dodik's supporters have used every possible opportunity to inflict a new wound on the deeply wounded judiciary of BiH, which is more or less run by SNSD cadres, headed by Milanko Kajganić, the Chief Prosecutor of the BiH Prosecutor's Office.

And now it has become definitively clear that the active case in Dodik's case is a smokescreen for the public, because, as I have argued from the beginning of the indictment, out of all the numerous reports, the one was chosen in which Dodik will most easily prove his 'innocence'. Because, do I need to remind you that the Serbian judiciary has still not provided Bosnia and Herzegovina with any documentation related to the purchase of Milorad Dodik's villa in Dedinje.

This means that an indictment against the leader of SNSD, Milorad Dodik, will certainly not be filed, regardless of the fact that Kajganić boasted that “two prosecutors” are engaged in this case.

Simply put, it is difficult to shake off the impression that the Debevec and Mehmedagić case currently suits Dodik the most.

Thus, Dodik stated that if the reasons for which the President of the BiH Court, Ranko Debevec, was arrested turn out to be true, then everything that this court has ruled will be questionable, including his trial.

"Is it possible for the President of the BiH Court to be arrested, and does anyone expect me to have confidence in that court?

I think all of this is rigged, what we had the opportunity to see yesterday and the day before yesterday," Dodik told reporters, adding that he had never met either Debevec or the arrested former director of the BiH Intelligence-Security Agency, Osman Mehmedagić.

Is it tiresome to repeat that the indictment of the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Milorad Dodik, although it may not seem so to the naive, is only a gain for the president of Republika Srpska, who, even before its confirmation, managed to rally the people in RS and bring them to the administrative line of the entity.

And EUFOR protected them, because their forces deployed on that imaginary inter-entity line showed that this border is respected in international circles.

The trial of Milorad Dodik is in the public focus, and he, along with his compromised defense, tries to mock the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a way similar to how the criminal Vojislav Šešelj behaved before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

And Debevec's arrest gave him a new ace up his sleeve. Of course, I do not want to talk about the potential innocence of the President of the Court, I am only expressing doubt due to the timing of the indictment. Three years is a long time, Prosecutor Jolović knows that, both in the 'Icon Case' and in the 'Wiretapping Case'. This is, in fact, new proof that the judiciary certainly times when and what it processes, because it wasn't just Dijana Kajmaković who kept files in her safe.

Therefore, these cases should be viewed objectively and without much fanfare, so that we do not again find ourselves on the defensive, where we will be proving to Dodik that the state of BiH exists, while he mocks the well-directed farce of Milanko Kajganić and his team.