Ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This historical consciousness will be formed by: the street, the press, politics, interest groups or international factors. This is written in the explanation of the petition demanding the urgent abolition of the reformed history teaching program in high schools and secondary vocational schools, which was submitted in mid-June by history professors and teachers and other citizens of Serbia.

The Bosnian state court on Thursday rejected a request from Croatia to remand Vinko Martinovic, alias Stela, in custody after his arrest the previous day on an international arrest warrant for committing a murder in 1996.

Jovanovic was sentenced in late April in the first instance to a year in prison for inciting ethnic hatred; Nilevic has been charged with the same.

On opposing sides of an ideological divide, Jovanovic and Nilevic are part of an alarming war of words playing out on social media in Montenegro, a war that took off in 2019 but has intensified since an earthquake election last year.

The lawyer pointed out that the court was guided in the verdict by "previously established facts".

"We had lunch together on May 8, 1993. In the evening, he went on duty, to replace a schoolmate of his, and he stayed there until May 9. That guy, Nedim, returned home and my Fedja stayed [at the Fourth Corps' command HQ]," his mother Jadranka Huskovic recalled of her last meeting with her son.

The Serbian authorities granted citizenship to former Bosnian Serb military policeman Mirko Vrucinic in June 2020 - two months before his defence was due to present its closing arguments in his war crimes trial, BIRN has learned.

PM Zdravko Krivokapic (left) during the Christmas procession in a church in Podgorica. Photo: Government of Montenegro

"I have been talking with Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch, Porfirije, and we will soon agree on the date of signing the agreement. This issue must not be the subject of politicization in order to score political points," Krivokapic wrote on Twitter.

Within hours of the announcement, video clips of her, some years' old, were circulating online. Unnoticed and unremarkable until now, suddenly they were problematic, scandalous and offensive.

NATO has hit back to a statement from the Russian embassy in Bosnia, which said on Friday that "in the event of practical rapprochement between Bosnia and Herzegovina and NATO, our country will have to react to this hostile step".

Mile Pazin's defence launched an appeal on Wednesday at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo against last September's verdict finding him guilty of the inhumane treatment of a Bosniak civilian prisoner during the war.