Why does SIPA only film arrests of Bosniaks and Croats?

The State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) publishes footage of arrests only of Bosniaks and Croats, while the arrest of Serb suspects passes without pompous media fanfare, even though in the last two months of this year dozens of former members of the Republika Srpska army were arrested, charged with the most monstrous crimes during the Serbian aggression against BiH, and whose names and appearance the public deserves to know, writes the Bosnian news agency Patria (NAP).

Numerous operations

Since the beginning of November, SIPA has carried out several operations across Bosnia and Herzegovina, arresting more than 30 former members of the Republika Srpska army, suspected of abusing and killing hundreds of Bosniak civilians from 1992 to 1995.

During or after the arrests, not a single photograph or video footage of the suspects has been published.

Among the latest arrested for war crimes is Milkan Gojković, who is charged with being one of the closest associates of the most monstrous criminal Veselin Vlahović Batko, who raped and killed dozens of Bosniak civilians in 1992 in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Grbavica. The arrest or photograph of his accomplice Gojković has not been published to this day.

At the end of November 2014, SIPA also arrested 12 persons suspected of war crimes committed in July 1992 against victims of Bosniak nationality in the area of the Prijedor municipality, in the village of Zecovi, but the public also does not know what those who killed more than 100 Bosniaks look like.

Prosecution orders

At the beginning of December 2014, by orders of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH and the Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes of Serbia, 14 persons were arrested, suspected of the war crime in Štrpci and Višegrad in 1992, when at least 20 victims, citizens of Serbia and Montenegro of Bosniak nationality, one person of Croatian nationality, and one person of Afro-Asian origin were abducted from a train on the Belgrade-Bar line and later killed in the territory of BiH.

The public does not know what these suspects of monstrous murders look like either, writes Patria.

On the other hand, the internet is flooded with footage of the handcuffed arrest of Šemsudin Mehmedović, a Bosniak representative in the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, who was suspected and then acquitted of charges of hiding weapons in the area of the Tešanj municipality.

Cameras always went along with SIPA's special forces, as well as the special forces of the Federal Police Administration during the arrests of members of the Salafi movement in BiH. The spectacular arrest of Kemal Čaušević, former director of the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH (UIO), then Jerko Ivanović Lijanović, federal minister of agriculture, and Milorad Bahilj, minister of trade in the Government of the Federation of BiH, as well as the SIPA and FUP raid on Gornja Maoča, were filmed and shown to the public...

Also filmed and spectacularly shown to the public was the arrest of another Bosniak, Hamdija Lipovača, prime minister of the Una-Sana Canton, who was arrested by FUP members on Wednesday, December 17, 2014, for alleged abuse of office back in 2007.

Waited for TV cameras

Federal special forces waited to carry out the operation until TV cameras appeared.

Also, when you type the name of Živko Budimir, president of the Federation of BiH, on YouTube, you can watch footage of his arrest and detention.

No one disputes that the police and judiciary should do their job. On the contrary. Every operation and verdict for crime, atrocities... should be supported, welcomed, and these pillars of law enforcement in BiH should be helped in their work.

However, one cannot so easily overlook what are called facts. SIPA and FUP should do their job professionally, and for that to be the case, there must be no double standards. Otherwise, we will continue to have "our" and "your" criminals, perpetrators... where we watch Bosniaks and Croats being led away in handcuffs, and when it comes to Serbs, there is silence, only a "spoonful" of information, mostly with initials.