After many unsuccessful attempts to cross the border between Bosnia and Croatia, a number of migrants started turning back to Greece to try to enter the EU via sea, participants of the “BiH 2019” research result presentation, said on Friday, in Sarajevo.

“These migrants have no identity and it's impossible to return them to their home countries because their countries are obstructing their return but the neighbouring countries are also obstructing thet readmission of migrants found residing in Bosnia,” the Head of the Operational Intelligence Department of Bosnia's Foreigners Affairs Service, Rade Kovac.

Bosnia does not have the best solution preventing the entrance of migrants to the country due to lack of human resources, but all the neighbouring countries have effectively closed their borders, he added.

Anton Travner, the Director of the International Office of the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance in Ljubljana noted that organized criminal groups operating in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina have smuggled some 5,000 migrants and earned between €7.5 and €10 million.

“Human trafficking is the most profitable and least risky form of crime, but also the most brutal because human beings are treated worse than material goods,” said Travner.

The “BiH 2019” operation, aimed at combating criminal offences in the field of illegal migration, was implemented In the past eight days and it achieved significant results providing Bosnia with a large number of useful information regarding illegal migrations and persons involved in such crime was.

Police officers from Austria, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Moldova and Slovenia in cooperation of the DCAF, EUROPOL and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency – FRONTEX took part in the operation.

Ever since Bulgaria and Hungary imposed the so-called hard border and deployed their armed forces to the border, the so-called “Migrant route” shifter across the territory of Bosnia, in a big to open the way towards the Western European countries.

Last year, 25,000 migrants entered the country while the authorities expect the number to be higher this year. Currently, there are some 9,000 registered migrants residing in the country.