Party of Democratic Action

More than 200 Bosnians holding banners and flags protested on Thursday in Sarajevo over the arrest of the country's intelligence chief, Osman Mehmedagic.

The head of the Intelligence and Security Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, OSA, was detained by Sarajevo Canton police on Wednesday in an investigation into abuse of office, forgery of documents and money laundering.

The report published on Tuesday by the controversial Commission for Investigating the Sufferings of Serbs in Sarajevo, which was set up by Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska to highlight its perspective on wartime events, claimed that Serbs were forced out of the Bosnian capital by Bosniak forces during the 1992-95 war.

Political leaders have come under fire for botched vaccine procurement as Bosnia and Herzegovina is hit hard by the latest wave of the pandemic, with another 2,000 infections registered on Wednesday.

A total of 6,598 people have died as a result of COVID-19 infections so far - 531 in the last seven days alone.

The first, partial results of Sunday's local elections still offer no clear indications as to who will be forming the new local government in Bosnia and Herzegovina's south-western city of Mostar, famous for its Old Bridge and infamous for its vicious fighting during the country's 1992-95 war, as well as for its post-war ethnic divisions.

Milan Tegeltija, head of the Bosnian High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, HJPC, the Bosnian state's top judicial institution, resigned on Thursday after coming under pressure from the public and the international community over alleged influence-peddling.

Officers of Bosnia's State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA, arrested three people on Tuesday in Srebrenica and the Tuzla area for election fraud during local elections in mid-November.

Bosnia's main Bosniak and Croat parties have finally struck a breakthrough deal on how to rule the ethnically-divided southwestern city of Mostar, paving the way for the first local elections to be held there since 2008. 

Fahrudin Radoncic told his colleagues at a session of Bosnia's Council of Ministers on Tuesday that he will submit his resignation as security minister after explaining earlier in the day that "political differences on strategic issues" with governing coalition partners were behind his reasons for quitting.

The question is what will happen next.

All eyes now turn to the notoriously inefficient public prosecutor's office, headed by Gordana Tadic, although concerns with Bosnia's prosecutors and courts long predate her tenure.

Bosnia's chief state prosecutor Gordana Tadic. Photo: detektor.ba/archive

The opposition in parliament in Bosnia's Federation entity has called for the dismissal of the government led by caretaker Prime Minister Fadil Novalic, who was detained for three days as a suspect in an investigation into the purchase of allegedly overpriced Chinese respirators.