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Shelved judicial reforms as a years long frustration for citizens

For three decades since the end of the war, there has been a pushback among judges, prosecutors and politicians to reform the judiciary and other institutions of relevance for establishing the rule of law through a process known as transitional justice. All previous attempts were externally-led, with pressure and conditioning that failed to prevail over the interests of politicians seeking to keep the country in a state of frozen conflict.

By: Lamija Grebo

Mihajlo Farkić was very much alive when judges in Bosnia and Herzegovina ruled that his deceased grandmother had no heirs to the valuable real estate in Sarajevo, thus allowing for illegal sale of the property belonging to his family.

Mihajlo, from a Jewish family who’ve lived in Sarajevo for generations, found documents proving that his father is the only child of his grandmother, Sara Romano. But he has been waiting for more than a decade for the national judiciary to sanction the judges and attorneys who wrongly allowed the property to be sold.

Back in the day when they initiated the process, they did not know what the legal system was like in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“We are extremely dissatisfied, to say the least, unpleasantly surprised by the inefficiency of the BiH judiciary,” he told Detektor.

His case is one of dozens which started being heard last month in which judges and attorneys in Sarajevo are accused of changing the property registers and reselling property, most often belonging to Jewish families, after it was claimed they had no heirs or had moved out of BiH. Mihajlo’s and other families have had to wait for years for the case, involving over 40 defendants, to be heard in court.

It would take a no-show of only one of the defendants in the courtroom for hearings to be postponed, which happened multiple times. It took more than six years from the confirmation of the indictment in 2018 to the actual commencement of the trial in 2024, costing the state more than half a million BAM.

The indictment has been split into several cases. Judge Lejla Fazlagić-Pašić is charged with making unlawful entries in property registers and reselling Mihajlo’s grandmother’s property in the Sarajevo settlement of Alifakovac.  When Fazlagić-Pašić returned, after spending cereal years in Croatia, to Sarajevo in August 2024, her case was merged with the case against Alija Delimustafić.

Mihajlo’s family filed a lawsuit against Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Sarajevo Canton as they hold Fazlagić responsible for all damages according to the European Charter on Judges.

After years lost in complicated court procedures, Mihajlo thinks the case will not end soon.

“There is still some link between those defendants charged with these crimes and most likely those who continue to work in the prosecutor’s office, public defendant’s office and the judiciary in BiH. At least it seems so to me, clearly I have no evidence in support, but it sure seems so to me,” says Mihajlo.

Since the Bosnian war, the judiciary in BiH has failed to gain the trust of citizens. Trials for war crimes usually lasted for 3-5 years, with only a handful of indictments for high-level corruption. Judicial institutions never went through the kind of in-depth reforms which are the essential elements in the ‘transitional justice’ process – a series of steps post-war countries must go through to strengthen the rule of law and rebuild trust.

With local politicians being slow and reluctant to carry out changes, all previous attempts at reforming the judiciary were externally-led, either through the Office of the High Representative (OHR) or the European Union, and even then only after huge external pressure

There have been no inherently local attempts to establish the rule of law, according to Refik Hodžić, an expert in transitional justice.

“There was never a shared vision among officials or those in power in the country. We had what we are living with even today. Politics has always been the continuation of the war, but with other means,” he said.

The legacies of war-time policies or those immediately after the war never allowed for institutional reforms and therefore transitional justice, eventually leading to dissatisfaction among citizens whose rights were not ensured.

Despite significant delays, the country still has ways to make up for the time lost.

The role of institutional reforms in transitional justice

According to the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), for societies to face up to the legacy of gross human rights violations, such as during a war, interventions need to occur not just in institutions and laws, but also in civil society and the community.

Reforming state institutions, improving their integrity, is an essential first step. Part of this is about seeking redress, accountability and the prevention of further conflict.

Public institutions – above all the police, military and the judiciary – are often instruments of repression and systemic human rights violations in conflict, or in authoritarian societies. Their reform, in transitioning towards peace and democratic governance, is considered a centrepiece of the transitional justice process.

Often, entire branches of government need to be reformed, with adequate checks and balances to ensure their professional independence. This requires revising a sizable share of current legislation, starting with the constitution itself.

The reform of judicial and security institutions must, according to the ICTJ, be followed up by changes in political, economic, social and cultural institutions in order for society to fully face the violations that have occurred.

Institutional reform is a process of revising and restructuring state institutions to ensure that institutions respect human rights, safeguard the rule of law and are accountable to their voters. By incorporating a transitional justice approach, reforms can provide for accountability and redress for abuses; ever more importantly, can disable the structures and ideologies that have enabled abuses in the first place.

As a transitional justice process, institutional reform seeks to promote victims as citizens and rights holders, and to build trust between all citizens and their public institutions. When such reform is well informed and implemented in an inclusive and transparent manner, it also proves to be reparative in nature. Measures that help advance institutional reform may include outreach campaigns on citizens’ rights and freedom of information and meaningful consultations with victims and civil society representatives on legislative initiatives.

Institutional reform can include many judiciary-related measures, including those aimed at:

– Transforming or drafting a new legal framework, such as the introduction of new constitutions or adoption of constitutional amendments and ratification of international treaties on human rights to ensure human rights protection and promotion.

– Ensuring that everyone has a legal identity, which is a prerequisite for the exercise of most human rights and access to public services.

– Structural reform of institutions to ensure that they are independent, accountable and representative and to ensure accountability, thereby improving their integrity and legitimacy.

– Screening of personnel during restructuring or recruitment, thorough examination of their prior experience, so as to eliminate from public service or otherwise sanction abusers and corrupt officials.

– Setting up publicly visible supervisory bodies within state institutions to ensure their accountability to civil administration.

– Disarming, demobilising and reintegrating armed stakeholders and providing justice-sensitive processes and means by which former veterans can be reintegrated in civil society.

– Training public officials and staff through training programmes on applicable human rights and international humanitarian law

The European Union accession also requires reforms in the judiciary and other institutions in order for the country to deliver on the European Commission’s 14 Key Priorities included in the country’s membership application from May 2019. The spotlight is on democracy and state functionality, rule of law, fundamentals and public administration reforms.

After the signing of the Dayton Accord which brought peace, the social system in the country was smashed, Hodžić explains. It had been a system tailored to war, to a greater or a lesser extent, depending on which part of the country people lived.

Judicial reform was supposed to bring about an independent and functional judiciary capable of dealing with the legacy of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

“We had what was, essentially, an externally-imposed framework through the interventions of the international community in its various forms from the Office of the High Representative or the UN Mission,” says Hodžić.

The key legal reforms the EU wants to see, Transparency International said last year, are the improvement of electoral legislation; the Law on the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC); reform of the constitutional court, the law on state courts, anti-corruption laws, such as the law on conflict of interest and the protection of whistleblowers. These reforms have been pending since 2011. As have a professionalised civil service, improved cooperation between security agencies, better efficiency in prosecuting corruption and organised crime. A promised move to more depoliticised and restructured, socially-owned enterprises has barely begun.

According to the most recent European Commission report for Bosnia and Herzegovina, reforms have been stalled for too long, so the authorities have asked to BiH to start delivering, especially when it comes to the judiciary, corruption and foreign policy alignment with the European Union.

Ivana Korajlić, Director of Transparency International in BiH, has been following the judicial reform for years now. But she is frustrated.

“Absolutely no progress has been made, regardless of some amendments to the legislation that have taken place. These did not lead to tangible results. They have not yet taken root, nor has their implementation started properly,” she says.

Judicial reform has been mired in ‘structural dialogue’ in BiH for years. In 2011, Milorad Dodik, the then President of the Republika Srpska and the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton started talks on judicial reform, leading to the departure of international judges and prosecutors from state judicial institutions. Yet after a decade of structural dialogue, the approach was abandoned due to its secretive nature, recalls Korajlić.

The failed process was revealed in a report by law expert Reinhard Priebe to the European Commission in 2019, in which he spelled out the devastating failure of the national judiciary to prosecute corruption. And, in her reports for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Judge Joana Korner listed worrying results in the work of the State Prosecutor’s Office in prosecuting war crimes.

It was also claimed that in addition to improvements in prosecutor’s offices and courts, the umbrella judicial body in BiH – the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) – was also in need of reform.

Asset verification: toothless?

 

After the recommendations of the European Commission’s 14 priorities, which largely focused on the rule of law and the functioning of the judiciary, this reform once again came into focus, with various expert reports calling for urgent legislative changes. Amendments were adopted four years later in 2023, but, says Korajlić, even then the changes were not enough.

“There’s again a gap left in the provisions that could potentially prevent not only the liability of the HJPC members being established in cases of conflicts of interest and the like, but also in terms of a verification of assets of judicial office holders. Asset verification was supposed to finally come to life as a mechanism that will monitor whether prosecutors and judges are involved in certain inappropriate actions and how they acquire assets,” explains Korajlić.

The actual start of asset verification for judges and prosecutors through the Integrity Department has been stalled for months, so the deadline for the start of the verification has been pushed back. In addition, the HJPC faced a lack of funding for the work and recruitments of staff for the department.

Despite calls from the HJPC itself for the Council of Ministers to get serious and provide the necessary support, it took state ministers way too much time to create the conditions for a properly run Integrity Department.

Apart from the Integrity Department and several other improvements in the HJPC laws, the plan is to adopt a brand new law within one year that would be fully in line with EU standards. But the Ministry of Justice kept the text of the law away from the eyes of the experts and the public, while the HJPC warned that they were insufficiently involved in the process.

The public only learned the details of the text when it was published by the Venice Commission, an advisory legal body whose recommendations the EU wants to see implemented in national legislation. But as announced at the September session of the HJPC,  the state-level Ministry of Justice will continue drafting this law in secret.

Poor progress in prosecuting corruption and non-transparent disciplinary procedures

Transparency International’s research showed that in 2023, Bosnia and Herzegovina was the second worst ranking country in Europe corruption-wise. BiH ranked 108 of a total of 180 countries assessed. Russia was the only country in Europe with a poorer ranking.

Countless reports from national and international organisations have been pointing to a lack of prosecution of high corruption for years. This is one of the main reasons why citizens lack trust in their judiciary.

Monitoring done in BiH by Transparency International and BIRN in 2022 showed that corruption trials take a long time, lack high-quality indictments and often end with a minimum sentence, with frequent changes of judges during the proceedings. It showed that hearings were scheduled less than once a month on average, taking an average of 22 months from the indictment to the first-instance verdict.

Srđan Blagovčanin, chairman of the board of directors of Transparency International, said that BiH has not recorded any progress in prosecuting corruption for years.

“It is quite clear that prosecuting political corruption is a key indicator of judicial independence. Without prosecution of political corruption with a high degree of certainty, we can find that the judiciary is under political control,” said Blagovčanin at the launch of the TI research last year.

Analysis by Transparency International and BIRN BiH also highlighted a lack of efficiency of the judiciary, low integrity and non-transparency.

According to the Transparency Index, many courts and prosecutor’s offices in BiH were in violation of statutory deadlines to respond to freedom of information requests, signalling that the institutions in charge of the rule of law are in fact violating it.

The online platform Judiciary Index made in cooperation with BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina offers results of the transparency index of courts and prosecutor’s offices in BiH, as well as information on cases of corruption and organised crime, as well as information on disciplinary procedures that are subject to monitoring.

The Index Data showed that civil society organisations face systemic obstacles in access to information.

For the purposes of the database, all courts and prosecutor’s offices were mapped, and the openness of judicial institutions was tested through a special methodology.

Four segments were tested – how much information they publish on websites, how they respond to ordinary media inquiries, how they respond to inquiries under the Law on Freedom of Access to Information and how they respond to ordinary citizens.

The results showed that 90 percent of prosecutor’s offices have no information whatsoever on criminal cases on their websites, 50 percent of courts completely ignored media inquiries, and 42 percent of all courts and prosecutor’s offices violated the statutory deadline of 15 days to respond to a request for free access to information. This is a testament that the very institutions in charge of the rule of law and ensuring that the laws of this country are complied with actually ignore and violate statutory deadlines. More than 50 percent of courts do not publish information about their first-instance judgments in any shape or form.

Judges and prosecutors charged with corruption or failing to prosecute have undermined public trust in the judiciary.

In April 2024 BIRN BiH revealed how five judges and prosecutors earned nearly 822,000 BAM during their long-term suspensions. Among them is the President of the State Court, Ranko Debevec, arrested in late 2023. At the time of this analysis, the prosecutorial decision in this case has not yet been made.

Former Chief State Prosecutor Goran Salihović was tried for abuse of office, but the defendant passed away before the proceedings against him concluded.

Gordana Tadić, also a former Chief State Prosecutor, was dismissed from office due to disciplinary liability.

The research of BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina on the actions of all police agencies in the last five years showed that hundreds of disciplinary procedures against law enforcement officers expired due to procedural deficiencies, and cases of police violence against the public went either unsanctioned or lengthy procedures are still underway.

Throughout BiH, hundreds of disciplinary proceedings against law enforcement officers are initiated every year. According to the laws and regulations, these are public, but nearly all law enforcement agencies have rejected BIRN BiH’s requests to submit documents on disciplinary procedures conducted in the last five years.

During the period, at least 1,900 disciplinary proceedings against police officers were carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Court police opened their archives to journalists, and after appeals or court decisions in the process of searching for data that lasted more than a year, another cantonal police did so. Their documents reveal that citizens do file a significant number of complaints against police officers.

BiH hesitates to rely on vetting and lustration

Although common in post-conflict societies, in the last three decades BiH has rarely opted for processes of thorough verification and removal of officers from the police and judiciary through vetting or lustration. Vetting is a process of examination of integrity through asset verification, potential links between office holders and those connected to organised crime, as well as checking the competence and knowledge and capacity of an individual to check his eligibility to perform a function in public administration. Lustration is a check that is not based on evaluating the integrity of an individual but rather examining his connections with a particular political group or institution believed to have caused rights violations.

The vetting process in Bosnia and Herzegovina was carried out in an organised fashion for the police and the judiciary. Vetting in the police started in 1999 and was carried out in the judiciary two years later.

The police vetting, carried out by the UN’s police task force, the IPTF, aimed at examining the liability of law enforcement at a time when human rights were systematically violated, with an emphasis on indicating the unfitness of a certain individual to serve on the force.

According to IPTF, the number of police officers in the country tripled after the war, reaching 45,000. Despite the large number of police, the Ministry of Interior failed to fulfil one of the main objectives of the Dayton Peace Agreement: ensuring the smooth return of citizens to their pre-war homes. The police were inefficient in investigating incidents against returnees or war crime cases.

According to the Transitional Justice Guide, an official document of BiH institutions, it was believed that the police are ineffective precisely because those responsible for human rights violations during the armed conflict are in decision-making posts today. The entire police system in both Entities was heavily influenced by political and ethnic elites, further deepening the mistrust of citizens, especially displaced persons, towards the institution of the police.

Certification of police officers took place against the backdrop of constant opposition among political elites to this process and insufficiently harmonised legislation between BiH’s two entities. During the verification, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was also consulted by IPTF sending the names of police officers to check whether any of them were mentioned in the Tribunal’s documents as perpetrators of war crimes. Those who passed the test received a certificate for work.

By the end of the vetting process, the number of police officers was reduced, so only about 16,000 received a new certificate for work. This was followed by arrests of police officers suspected of taking part in war crimes. But, due to the urgency, verification procedures were not carried out in a detailed way, with some checks not carried out properly.

On the other hand, officers whose application for certification was denied were not provided with any redress mechanism, which was found to constitute a serious violation of the rights of decertified police officers. Some police officers even appealed with the European Court of Human Rights and UN bodies.

During the vetting process for the judiciary, all posts were declared vacant and were open for application to judges and prosecutors who already held these posts, much like anyone else.

The process of reappointment in the judiciary was initiated and carried out by the Independent Judicial Commission (IJC), succeeded by the HJPC, which continued its work. Judges and prosecutors were subject to checks of professional references and moral credibility.

As the Transitional Justice Guide explains, the motive behind such radical procedure was the fact that the judicial office holders, who were to be the backbone of the reform, had spent most of their careers in the judiciary in a single-party system of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). They then worked in the ethnically ‘cleansed’ judiciary in the years before the war, during the war and in the years immediately after the Dayton Agreement, before the international community established its trial monitoring system.

After the signing of the Dayton Agreement at the Entity and cantonal levels, no serious steps were taken towards judicial reform. Property rights were unprotected, there were very few war crimes cases initiated, and those that were prosecuted were not conducted in accordance with the standards of a fair and just trial. Cases of attacks on returnees were generally not prosecuted, which generated a belief among citizens in BiH that people carried out these acts with impunity.

The judiciary reappointment process led to the immediate abolition of about 30 percent of courts in BiH, and around one percent of prosecutor’s offices. Out of 953 posts, a total of 878 were filled.

Although it is generally considered a major and far-reaching step has been taken by these processes, the public is generally unhappy with the results. So are organisations and civil society activists.

Citizens are unhappy because some police officers who received work certificates after the verification were subsequently charged and convicted in war crimes cases. Similar procedures were not repeated later, but the HJPC did warn that the delays in setting up the Integrity Department for asset verification of judges and prosecutors, could lead to demands for a new vetting in the judiciary. At the time Albania was going through that same process with significant impact on judiciary.

At its session in October 2017, the HJPC concluded that the prosecutor’s offices in BiH should be requested information if any other judge or prosecutor in BiH is under investigation or whether they are mentioned in the information of the Center for Research on War and War Crimes and the Search for Missing Persons of the Republika Srpska or,

The Republika Srpska War Crimes Research Centre submitted to the HJPC a list of 15 judges and prosecutors who, they believe, are working against the Serb people.

At the suggestion of the then HJPC President, Milan Tegeltija, conclusions were adopted, allowing for the possibility of dismissing judges and prosecutors without a disciplinary procedure. But after pressure from the international community, and public correspondence between representatives of judicial institutions at the state and Entity levels, the HJPC gave up on requesting the information.

In 2024, the wartime past of judges came into focus once again when the Republika Srpska President, Milorad Dodik, in ongoing proceedings against him for non-compliance with the decisions of the High Representative. He commented on the wartime past of the acting judge in his case, Sena Uzunović.

In his public statement, he linked the war crime of the murder of the Golubović family in the area of Konjic with Judge Uzunović. The State Court responded, arguing that the judge performed in the post with no jurisdiction over war crimes during the war. They called Dodik’s statement an attack on the reputation, honour and professional career of Judge Uzunović. They also added that the statement was incorrect, unfounded and based on the personal opinion of an individual, whilst ignoring previously established facts.

Resistance to asset verification for judicial office holders

While Albania dismissed nearly 100 judges and prosecutors through asset verification, the judiciary in BiH has successfully resisted the process for decades now. The HJPC already collects data on assets of judges and prosecutors, but amendments to legislation that would allow it to verify asset declarations have been delayed for years.

The HJPC itself struggled for years to establish an asset verification system. When it finally arrived on the statute books, the State Court repealed it in 2020 on the grounds of non-compliance with the law. Ironically, it turned out that the HJPC, composed of leading lawyers, judges, prosecutors and attorneys, had failed to stipulate the new rules in accordance with the law.

The judgment was passed after the decision of the BiH Personal Data Protection Agency, prohibiting the HJPC from processing personal data of judges and prosecutors. Internal rules were overturned by judges themselves after the objection of the Association of Judges of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2018, stating potential for “abuse and endangering the safety of judicial office holders”.

The new arrangement came only in 2023, but the application of these amendments to the Law on the HJPC does not come into effect until late 2025.

Years of ignoring security threats without valid strategies

In addition to prosecuting corruption, the national judiciary has also faced criticism for its selective approach to sanctioning returning foreign fighters. While foreign fighters returning from Syria and Iraq were all charged, only one returnee from the Russian forces in Ukraine was charged but ultimately acquitted.

BiH faced challenges in the shape of extremism and terrorism in the aftermath of the war, when a network of organisations and individuals linked to the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 was discovered.

But BiH had allowed itself to go without a valid counter terrorism strategy for years. As a result of the attack on the US and its embassy in Sarajevo a decade later, BiH for years remained focused exclusively on religious extremism. This was further strengthened with the first departures to Iraq and Syria when dozens of its nationals joined the so-called Islamic State.

Five years into the fall of ISIL and BiH has still not returned all its nationals who joined this terrorist organisation. One group had an organised return in late 2019, but children without national documents faced several months of uncertainty to obtain a birth certificate and thus the right to health insurance and education.

Many children and their mothers are still in camps in Syria where they are exposed to further radicalisation. There is not enough political will in BiH to return them despite several protests by their families.

Almost all returning foreign fighters from the area once controlled by the so-called Islamic State have been convicted, but according to experts, their sentences are inadequate.

BIRN BiH analysed these and other cases of terrorism in the region.

Several terrorist acts were prevented by law enforcement and security agencies, and legal proceedings were initiated against perpetrators.

Mevlid Jašarević was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a terrorist act after his attack on the United States Embassy building in Sarajevo in October 2011, wounding a police officer securing the building.

Haris Čaušević was sentenced to 35 years in prison for the terrorist attack on the police building in Bugojno in June 2010, killing police officer Tarik Ljubuškić, while his colleague Edina Hindić sustained life-threatening injuries, and several other police officer suffered mild injuries. Adnan Haračić was sentenced to 14 years in prison for helping Čaušević transport an explosive device to the police building.

According to the verdict, damage was caused to the building of at least 190,000 BAM, while the total minimum damage to the surrounding buildings was 275,000 BAM.

In November 2024, during an attack on the police station in Bosanska Krupa, a juvenile killed one and wounded another police officer, after which he was arrested. This act is currently being investigated as terrorism. Several were arrested in connection with this event.

In addition to the crime of terrorism on the territory of BiH, proceedings were conducted before the State Court against around 40 foreign fighters.

Husein Bosnić was sentenced to seven years in prison for publicly encouraging and recruiting for terrorist activities and organising a terrorist group, while Ibro Ćufurović was sentenced to four years in prison for participating in terrorist activities, providing assistance and fighting on the side of ISIL.

These are some of the highest sanctions imposed for this offence. Other sanctions range from one to four years. The often-lenient sentencing policy for these offences has been the subject of much debate and criticism.

Although it is possible that the observed lenient sentencing policy in BiH, especially when compared to the conditions imposed in terrorism-related cases abroad, is a result of a specific context related to foreign terrorist fighters from BiH and differences in criminal justice systems and jurisprudence, the court should in any case elaborate in detail the purpose of sanction, as noted in Criminal Prosecution of Foreign Terrorist Fighters in BiH, authored by Mirza Buljubašić and Vlado Azinović.

As concluded by the authors, this would be a way to send a clearer message to the public in terms of the positive and negative aspects of general prevention, which certainly includes not only deterrence from terrorism-related crimes and its impact on citizens, but also condemning the ideology in the name of which the crimes were committed abroad, leaving immeasurable consequences for BiH.

In addition to the threat of Islamist radicalisation, one of the earlier reports on security situation in BiH indicated that ethnic and national extremism is visibly present in BiH, with a negative impact on the security environment.

The report recognised several movements from Ravna Gora as champions of this type of radicalism. In their work, they deny the legitimacy of the state of BiH, and share negative comments and oppose the Euro-Atlantic integration processes of BiH.

BIRN’s research on Ravna Gora’s associations in BiH showed prominent members were tried for war crimes and that security agencies warned that these movements were spreading extremist messages.

For years, the national judiciary has ignored such threats, and claims by returnees that Ravna Gora associations are spreading fear in small communities. Only one judgment was passed against its members for inciting hatred, after they published a video with members singing about new killings in Višegrad.

Dušan Sladojević, Slavko Aleksić and Risto Lečić were each sentenced to five months in prison for causing ethnic, racial and religious hatred, discord and intolerance in the area of Višegrad and its surroundings in March 2019. According to the verdict, they committed the criminal offence of Inciting Ethnic, Racial and Religious Hatred, Discord and Intolerance with their activities at the gathering of Ravna Gora associations in Višegrad, glorifying the Chetniks and Draža Mihailović, and with songs expressing threats and violence.

Fatmir Alispahić was acquitted of causing ethnic, religious and racial hatred, discord and intolerance in his texts published on Antimigrant.ba portal.

He was accused of having on several occasions, during 2019 and 2020, through the website Antimigrant.ba, as an administrator and editor of the content, as well as through social media, published texts and videos abundant in statements that incite and spread hatred towards migrants and the migrant population, as well as between the constituent peoples in BiH.

Experts interviewed by BIRN BiH expressed concern about the possible consequences of this acquittal, considering that it found that Alispahić’s claims fall within the remit of freedom of thought and speech.

In 2020, Tonija Bašić was accused of inciting terrorist activities, anti-Semitism, racism, nationalism, as well as threats to LGBT population on several occasions online, with her posts: “Gas every Jew”, “Go on the path of genocide” and the like. Although the original offence was qualified as terrorism, charges were changed to Inciting Ethnic and Religious Hatred, Discord and Intolerance.

It was not until the latest strategy, valid until 2026, that right-wing extremism was recognised. These groups in BiH have long been associated with other international organisations around the world. In their communities, they make life difficult for returnees and affect their sense of unsafety. Some of them are particularly inspired by Russian or pro-Russian right-wing organisations that have been used in countries with a fragile security situation to cause unrest and spread hatred.

Mild sanctions for hate crimes do not contribute to prevention

In BIRN BiH’s research on hate crimes, it was found that in the last ten years, there has been very low rates of prosecuting and recording hate crimes, as well as that in most cases, only suspended sentences are handed down. During the presentation of OSCE research this year, Halisa Skopljak, Acting Head of the OSCE’s Rule of Law Section, clarified that only a few incidents are reported compared to the actual number.

“Non-reporting resulted in difficulties in shaping a proper institutional response, continued division in society, polarised ethnic groups and increased distrust in institutions,” said Skopljak.

The problem is that these cases are not always classified as hate crimes or that investigation takes years.

Hate crimes or hate-motivated crimes do not only affect returnees, but also LGBT community, persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups.

After the murder of Nizama Hećimović in Gradačac, the public in the country started talking more about murders of women out of hatred. While murders of women committed by men around the world are increasingly prosecuted as hate crimes, this is still not the case in BiH.

In March 2023, in Banja Luka, activists and members of the Organisational Committee of BiH Pride March were attacked, but the police never discovered the attackers.

In May 2022, the first verdict for discrimination against LGBT people was rendered.

Hate mapping is a database of hate speech, discriminatory speech, genocide denial and denial of other war crimes uttered by officials or public figures in the media or social media, and incidents in which hatred is provoked or war crimes denied.

Using this data, BIRN BiH conducted research that showed that the Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik is the politician with the most statements inciting the spread of hatred during 2022. Despite numerous reports and investigations, not a single indictment was ever brought against Dodik for these crimes.

Two years after the then cantonal delegate Samra Ćosović-Hajdarević wrote on her Facebook profile that LGBT people should be isolated and eliminated from society, the court in Sarajevo concluded that as a prominent politician she discriminated against this minority group.

After a swastika was drawn on the obituary of Želimir Altrac Čičak in 2021, members of the Jewish community said that they feel safe in Sarajevo, but that they are worried about hate messages and the way in which the rise of anti-Semitism could reflect on Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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