As Bosnia’s fragile justice system struggles to rebuild from the war, one high-profile crime case is set to test the extent of corruption in the courts, police and public administration.
It will expose just how far the tentacles of influence of Muhamed Ali Gasi, an unemployed baker turned “entrepreneur” charged with criminal association, extortion, links to murder and assault, reached into the system.
“He was untouchable. I saw the fear that he instilled in this community,” said Rosario Ioanna, an organized crime advisor to the EU police mission in Sarajevo, whose streets Gasi cruised in a red Ferrari sports car.
“There is corruption” throughout the police, justice and political system, he said. “This trial will show just how far it goes.”
Thirteen years after the war, Bosnia’s police force comprises 15 different agencies — more are to come under new reforms — at local, state and national level and is plagued by bad communication and coordination between them.
The justice system, meanwhile, has been reformed but remains a grab bag of methods used in other countries that Bosnia’s officials are still getting used to, and prosecutors in particular are struggling to deal with the added workload.
The notoriety of Gasi, a high-profile suspected crime boss but still not at the very top of Bosnia’s criminal tree, and questions about his influence were fueled by his release after a number of arrests for “lack of evidence.”
Through contacts in the media — photographs of him with girls and guns were pasted on the front of glossy magazines — he taunted prosecutor Oleg Cavka, struggling with legal squabbles and attempts to force him to quit.
“I couldn’t have imagined what was in store for me. I had never confronted an orchestrated attempt to discredit me,” said Cavka, who aims to wrap up an indictment against Gasi and his associates by September.
The confrontation between the two has become legendary.
In one often-told incident while police were hunting him, Cavka recounted, Gasi asked his lawyer to track down the prosecutor’s telephone number and called him up mid-chase on his mobile.
“Why is everybody chasing me?” asked Gasi, who accuses Cavka of trying to extort money from him.
While at large, the suspected crime boss was also able to ensure that a long rant against the prosecutor and the authorities was broadcast on the main FTV television station during a prime time news program.
“How can it be that 350 police officers are searching for a guy who can call up public television and talk for 10 minutes on the evening news,” Cavka said.
According to Edin Vranj, organized crime unit chief, Gasi had papers to show he was a hero of the 1992 to 1995 war that set Bosnia alight — although he would have been about 12 at the time — as well as a model citizen.
“It makes you sick to see the sort of documents he had, showing that he was an important person in Sarajevo,” he said.
Given the massive backlog of cases faced by Sarajevo’s 40 prosecutors, Cavka can only marvel that Gasi will see the inside of a court.
“It’s really a miracle that we managed to bring this case to trial,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to