Vasvija Vidovic, the lawyer of a man said to have issued an illegal university diploma to head of BiH intelligence agency Osman Mehmedagic, said Thursday that there were no grounds for extending the custody of her client, Denis Prcic, and that she gave the State Court detailed reasons for that argument.

“For the criminal offence charged against my client to be committed, the main perpetrator had to be treated first. It is clear that the perpetrator is Mr Mehmedagic. The basic presumption of the indictment is that the diploma issued by the University of Banja Luka is invalid, losing sight of the fact that the diploma was revoked in the inspection by the inspection bodies. Furthermore, the diploma was reviewed in an administrative dispute by the Banja Luka District Court, which annulled the decision of the inspection bodies,” she told the press.

According to her, the diploma is valid and the State Court is not the competent level to deal with this issue.

“According to what the prosecutor said today, the Intelligence and Security Agency (OSA) had only that diploma in its file and paid salaries according to it. In this segment, it is not possible to talk about the property-legal benefit, nor about the characteristics of the criminal offence of abuse of official position. It is, possibly, about the criminal act of forging an official document, that is, the use of that forgery, which is still at the level of grounds for suspicion,” she said.

The reason why she argued the State Court is not the competent court, she said, is that Prcic was the only accused in the case, that he was not employed in the OSA, nor does he work in a state institution. Therefore, she argued, the Municipal Court in Sarajevo or Tuzla are the correct institutions for this.

OSA Director Osman Mehmedagic was arrested on the order of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH, which is conducting an investigation against Mehmedagic in the “Diploma” affair. The investigation is trying to determine the validity of the diploma that Osmanagic obtained at the American University in Tuzla, where he is suspected of never being a student. Denis Prcic is the owner of this university was recently arrested as well and placed in custody. He is suspected of the criminal offence of assisting the perpetrator after the commission of a criminal offence.