Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) Council of Ministers declared a day of mourning for two BiH police officers killed in a crossfire with car robbers on Friday morning.
Family, friends and colleagues attended the commemoration for two killed policemen, sending a message that the sadness that remains after them is difficult to be described by words. They recalled that Adis Sehovic was awarded 13 times for his bravery and Davor Vujinovic was awarded 6 times with a badge.
“This is an irrecoverable loss to families, the loss for Sarajevo police where the two policemen gave the maximum contribution by performing all their jobs and tasks professionally, and the loss for Canton Sarajevo and all of BiH,” Head of Ministry of Interior of Canton Sarajevo (MUP KS) Mevludin Halilovic said during the commemoration ceremony on Monday here.
At around 4:00 a.m. (0200 GMT) on Friday in Sarajevo, two policemen noticed thieves while they were stealing a car, and before policemen came out of the car, perpetrators opened a fire and escaped. One police officer was killed and another passed away in the hospital due to a severe head injury.
On the day of mourning, the flags in front of public institutions were put at a half mast and cultural and sporting events were adjusted to the day of mourning.
Members of MUP KS interrogated 49 persons that can be connected with perpetrators, and conducted a raid of 12 places, but no one is arrested still.
BiH has reached a certain level of preparedness in the fight against organized crime, adopting a new strategy for combating organized crime. However, financial investigations are still underdeveloped, was stated in the European Commission’s 2018 Report on BiH.
In 2017, in the fight against organized crime, 53 investigations were conducted with 335 suspects, and 13 judgments with 44 convicted. The amount of seized assets in 2017 was 837,000 euros (952,892 U.S. dollars).
The report states that the total number of police officers in BiH is some 16,000, which is 453 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to the EU average of 211.
The analysis of BiH Agency for Statistic show that in 2017, there were 170 convicted people for property theft, including cars. A total of 775 vehicles were stolen in BiH, out of which 431 in Canton Sarajevo.
In the first half of 2018, 243 cars were stolen in BiH, and 150 of the cars were stolen in Canton Sarajevo, mainly of Volkswagen brand.
(Source: ST, photo:Fena)
