Prosecution as "knows nothing": New pressures on returnees in Vlasenica, witnesses suddenly withdraw testimony in Kraljević case!

By: A.Čorbo-Zećo

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I wasn't surprised when a well-informed colleague recently told me in a conversation that he had forgotten about Operation Ruben, carried out in Republika Srpska in 2015 when 31 people were arrested on suspicion of planning terrorist activities against RS institutions and their representatives!?

I am not surprised, because for a long time now, politics has left the returnees to fend for themselves, so accordingly, colleagues, journalists also erase these staged cases from their memory, cases that frightened families still remember.

I say, this was an attempt to intimidate returnees, because in the later period all investigations were dropped, but the fear still exists today.

It is even greater today after the attack on returnees in a village near Višegrad, where Fadil and Ajša Memišević suffered serious bodily injuries.

They were attacked by 36-year-old Bojan Prodan, who was soon arrested for robbery and brutal beating of two elderly people in the village of Omeragići.

I am comparing these two stories because a continuation follows, and it is related to the fabricated Operation Ruben, but also to the fact that unresolved cases, the fact that the national balance in RS institutions has been disrupted, are among the main reasons why attacks on returnees continuously occur and why the abuse of institutions against returnees is not sanctioned.

Samir Okić, one of the Bosniaks arrested in the RS Ministry of Internal Affairs operation 'Ruben', was released and will later receive a notice of the investigation being dropped.

In 2015, the RS Ministry of Internal Affairs tore up the floors of his stables, searched the hay in search of non-existent weapons; today, in 2023, an inspection is coming to the same stables!? The communal police received a report about 'smell from the stables' and went to draw up a report.

They could determine that there are indeed four stables and that they are located in the third zone, where the construction of auxiliary facilities is permitted.

Without any adequate conclusion, except for the listed facts, a report was made, which Okić agreed with, noting that there is no smell from the facilities because everything is kept tidy, and that manure is taken to the fields in the spring.

“I understood this as new pressure,” Okić told Patria.

The feeling of pressure in the municipality of Vlasenica is not unknown, especially after the BiH Prosecutor's Office filed an indictment for war crimes in Vlasenica, and among the accused is the current mayor of Vlasenica, Miroslav Kraljević, known as Mićo.

Thus, a protected witness under the pseudonym VS-6 refused to testify against former police officials of the Public Security Station in Vlasenica, who are accused of crimes in this city.
Prosecutor Seid Marušić stated that he spoke with the witness and that he still refuses to testify, and that he did not provide him with the reasons for his decision.
“The witness wrote to me that he wants to testify, I really don't know how he changed his mind overnight,” said the prosecutor.

As always, the circle closes precisely at the BiH Prosecutor's Office, which should certainly know the reasons, and according to Patria's findings, Prosecutor Marušić himself was informed of these pressures in previous years, who apparently did not consider the reports serious at the time; today, when witnesses withdraw, he claims not to know the reasons for it.