Police in Bosnia’s Serb-majority part have on Tuesday arrested two suspects in the assassination of businessman Slavisa Krunic and one of his associates in the city of Banja Luka the night before.
Suspects Emilio Balda and Goran Milanovic have together with Zeljko Kovacevic – one of the attackers who died in the shootout – allegedly assassinated Krunic, his bodyguard Zarko Pavlovic and have injured Krunic’s driver Goran Ilic.
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Police in Republika Srpska (RS), one of Bosnia’s two semi-autonomous entities, issued a warrant for another suspect who is on the run.
RS Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic expressed condolences to the families of those who were killed saying that authorities will put every effort into solving and preventing such cases.
“There were murders before as well, this government will surely not be able to solve all of them, but we will do what we can so that there is less and less of them,” he said.
“Murder, the loss of human life, the loss of a businessman who had significant economic capacities, is also a loss for the RS, but most of all for his family,” Viskovic said, adding that he will push for some legal changes that would prevent such cases in the future.
N1 asked the President of Republika Srpska, Zeljka Cvijanovic, about the security situation in the entity.
“There is no complete security anywhere on the planet,” Cvijanovic said. “No complete protection for anyone exists anywhere, but it is important that institutions swiftly solve certain problems when they occur,” she said, expressing condolences to the families of the victims.
But she also touched upon a controversial issue, the forming of an auxiliary police unit in the RS.
The National Assembly in the entity adopted a draft of legal changes that would establish such a unit, but according to politicians in the other semi-autonomous entity, the Federation (FBiH), forming it would breach the 1995 agreement which ended the war in Bosnia.
Bosniak politicians have expressed fear that such a unit would be turned into something like an infantry. This would breach articles of the Dayton Peace Agreement which say that there needs to be a balance in military capacities in the two entities.
That is why several FBiH political parties said that if the RS establishes the unit, the other entity should do so as well.
“It is necessary to introduce a reserve unit of the RS Interior Ministry. Resources for that are being planned. We have nothing against others doing the same, in accordance with the law, and as is needed in the cantons or the Federation as a whole,” Cvijanovic said, arguing that the reserve unit “increases the level of security.”
