The streets of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s cities have been the scene of violence in recent months, the perpetrators of which often put the citizens themselves in danger. The violent behavior of a person on prison leave during the weekend in Tuzla and the murder the day before yesterday in Sarajevo are only apparent manifestations in a society that has serious security problems.
The Prosecutor’s Office of the Tuzla Canton requested from the Tuzla Municipal Court a measure of one-month detention for Elvis Selimović. It is about a person who has been convicted multiple times for various criminal offenses and who last weekend, during his prison leave, violently caused material damage, threatened the safety of citizens and threatened the police during the arrest operation. This case will only add to his criminal record. The question is whether it will prevent the repetition of these acts in the future.
ADMIR ARNAUTOVIĆ, representative of the Prosecutor’s Office TC
“We have glaring examples of violence, not only in this form, but in the last few months we have had serious forms of blood offenses, murders of both women and men, so what the Prosecutor’s Office is doing is repression. We are dealing with the consequences, we are prosecuting such persons, but all other institutions and mechanisms within the institutions of the system should take certain measures.”
The problem is not in the Law on Execution of Criminal Sanctions, according to lawyer Damir Alić, but in the practice that penitentiaries have turned the release of prisoners on regular leave into something more than a privilege.
DAMIR ALIĆ, lawyer, Tuzla
“We have a situation where convicted murderers for crimes of blood, for sexual crimes, are regularly released because they refuse some kind of positive evaluation within the prison system, that they are suitable prisoners, and in fact their serious crime that they committed is taken lightly, so they are released to freedom and then they commit new crimes.”
Murders in public places, such as the murder on the Wilson Promenade in Sarajevo, as well as violent behavior in Tuzla, have always been and will always be, but sociologists are concerned about the trends present in the post-war BiH society.
SMILJANA VOVNA, sociologist, Tuzla
“What is worrying is, for example, the increase in those narcotics found on the road. But here we are also witnessing the accusations that drugs enter right through the top, namely the political top, of our country. Whether this is true or not, the investigation will show, but it is enough for us to have a justified suspicion that those who decide our destinies are in fact working to expand, on crime, for some personal interest and profit.”
For years we have been listening to warnings that state institutions and society as a whole do not deal with the essence of the problem, but only react to the consequences of incident cases. Instead of dealing with educational, social and economic issues, the aggressively dominant policy of national divisions captured the public space, skillfully hiding the real problems of the citizens, BHRT writes.
