A hearing is underway for the detention of the President of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ranko Debevac and the former director of the Intelligence and Security Agencies (OSA) of BiH, Osman Mehmedagic, in the Court of BiH. At the very beginning of the hearing, the defence requested that the public be prohibited from attending the hearing, which was denied.

Also, at the beginning, there was a defence request for the disqualification of Judge Branko Peric, who explained that it was not possible to resolve that issue. Namely, there was no one to decide on him since there is no President of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, so the issue remained pending until the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) made a final decision on acting President of the Court of BiH.

Prosecutor Bojana Jolovic then began to explain the motion for detention.

She pointed out that the suspects were in collusion and that she had never faced such great obstacles in gathering evidence.

She explained that the checks were carried out for several months, and cited an example of a witness, an OSA officer, whom she called to testify on several occasions. However, he received a call from Osman Mehmedagic every time beforehand. In one of the calls, Mehmedagic told him that “Ranko called him, he was scared because he knows that the judge is questioning him”. That call to the witness happened when the prosecutor of the Court asked for certain documentation, so she cited the case as an example of the mutual connection of the suspects, but also of the influence on witnesses.

In the call, Mehmedagic told one of the witnesses, ‘Why would you go to Jolovic? Be smart, tell her that everything is going according to procedure.’

Jolovic noted that there is also a file where Debevec tells one of the police officers, “I’ll get out of this but you better think about your situation”, and that he resisted arrest.

Debevec protested several times, he claimed that untruths were being told, after which Judge Peric threatened to throw him out of the courtroom, which has not happened so far.

Debevec and Osmanagic were arrested on Monday. They are suspected of abuse of office.