UNDER THE U.S. EMBASSY'S INFLUENCE: HJPC TO DECIDE NEXT WEEK ON ANNOUNCING COMPETITIONS FOR POSITIONS IN THE SO-CALLED Federal USKOK

(Patria) - The High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) has never stated why it annulled the competitions for positions in the Special Department for the Suppression of Corruption, Organized and Inter-Cantonal Crime, the Head of the Department, as well as prosecutors in the aforementioned Department and judges who will work on these cases in the Supreme Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a session has been scheduled for October 16 and 17, at which a decision on a new competition will be made.

Instead of the HJPC, the U.S. Embassy itself confirmed to Patria what was presumed, that they supported the annulment of the competitions and that the HJPC acted correctly. The fact that the President of the HJPC, Halil Lagumdžija, did not provide legal grounds for how they annulled three competitions and under which article of the Rules of Procedure is apparently of no concern to either the HJPC or the embassy.

"Expanding the candidate pool will allow the most qualified judges and prosecutors to be considered for these key positions, thereby encouraging positive, long-term results from the special departments," the Embassy stated to NAP on September 27.

The HJPC session was held on September 25 and 26, when the HJPC first did not appoint a special deputy chief federal prosecutor who is to be the head of the Special Department, and then neither prosecutors nor judges, although these were three separate competitions. However, Lagumdžija gave an awkward explanation even before the HJPC's decision that "without appointing the Head of the Department, neither prosecutors nor judges can be appointed".

The U.S. Embassy also set a deadline for the HJPC by the end of the year to establish and fill the special departments, and the premises leased by the FBiH Government at Alipašina 6 have been costing 26,000 KM per month since the beginning of October.

From the response the Embassy provided to the media, it is now more than evident that the names of the candidates who passed the procedure were problematic, so it was decided at the last minute to repeat everything. The proof of this will be the "new" names that will appear in the upcoming competition. Some are already being speculated about, especially for the Head of the Special Department, who should be from the ranks of the BiH Prosecutor's Office and who closely cooperates with the U.S. Embassy.

At the end of last week, the President of the HJPC, Halil Lagumdžija, was visited by Daniel Koski, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As announced by the HJPC, the topics of discussion were current issues of the functioning of the BiH judicial system, with a special emphasis on the selection and appointment of the Deputy Chief Federal Prosecutor of the Federal Prosecutor's Office of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, i.e., the Head of the Special Department of the Federal Prosecutor's Office of the FBiH for the Suppression of Corruption, Organized and Inter-Cantonal Crime, as well as prosecutors in the aforementioned Department and judges who will work on these cases in the Supreme Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.