The Municipal Court in Sarajevo sentenced Irfan Mulalic to four years and Ishak Bilal to one year in prison for the crimes of robbery and blackmail against members of the LGBTIQ community on several occasions.

Mulalic was sentenced after entering a plea agreement with the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office, Djana Dalac, the lawyer for the injured parties, told Detektor.ba.

The Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor Nermin Keranovic explained to Detektor that in mid-June Mulalic was sentenced to four years in prison for the crimes of robbery and blackmail, committed in a very short time. He added that the convicted Mulalic will be in custody until he gets sent to serve his prison sentence.

He said that the Municipal Court in Sarajevo found Bilal guilty of robbery at the end of May 2024, and his lawyer Amir Hadzic confirmed that he too signed the agreement, after which he was sentenced to one year in prison.

Detektor.ba previously wrote that the indictment was confirmed against them, according to which Mulalic came into contact with three homosexual men, from mid-October 2023 until his arrest, through a social network and an app for meeting gay and bisexual men.

According to the indictment, Mulalic blackmailed one of the victims by saying that he would tell his relatives about his sexual orientation if he did not give him money. He also presented himself as a police officer and showed a badge with the inscription “Special police”.

In this way, Mulalic and Bilal obtained an illegal gain of some 800 Bosnian marks (some € 400).

In 2022, the Sarajevo Municipal Court passed a first-instance verdict for discrimination against the then cantonal MP Samra Cosovic-Hajdarevic, for writing on her Facebook profile that “LGBTIQ people should be isolated and removed from society.”