REPUBLIKA SRPSKA POLICE DEMONSTRATE ABILITY TO NEUTRALIZE THREATS OF HIGHEST LEVEL

EAST SARAJEVO, AUGUST 20 /SRNA/ - By effectively handling the terrorist incident in the village of Zovi Do near Nevesinje, the Republika Srpska police demonstrated their ability to neutralize threats of the highest level, while also protecting the lives and property of citizens, said counter-terrorism expert Dževad Galijašević.

Galijašević told SRNA that the Republika Srpska Ministry of Internal Affairs should receive regular intelligence data from the Intelligence-Security Agency /OBA/ of BiH about all security-suspicious individuals who have entered BiH, specifically about several thousand individuals labeled as fake migrants. He believes that the 1,500 migrants located around Bihać pose, as he said, a direct threat to Banja Luka, which warrants serious security measures and adherence to security protocols. Galijašević emphasized that he was not surprised by the terrorist incident in the village of Zovi Do, as it was expected. “We must keep in mind that we are talking about illegal migrations and illegal entry into the country. These are not individuals who have documentation verifying their identity and country of origin, which would allow us to determine whether they pose a threat to national security,” Galijašević pointed out. According to him, the Intelligence-Security Agency /OBA/ has declared only four individuals a threat to national security since 2018, despite 150,000 people passing through BiH and nearly 2,000 being expelled from the country. “The International Organization for Migration /IOM/ presents us as merely a small transit route for migrants, with their ultimate goal being to reach EU countries. However, it is clear that many of these individuals have remained in so-called temporary centers and pose a serious threat to BiH's security,” Galijašević pointed out. He assessed that the overall context of events in the Balkans these days must be analyzed, given that some terrorist activities have been shifted from the Middle East and that so-called terrorist incidents, such as those in Serbia and now in Republika Srpska, are occurring more frequently. "The question is how to determine the identity of a migrant who has no documentation, if he is not registered and is not in any database. How did he actually acquire the bomb he threw, and how did he obtain automatic and semi-automatic weapons? What network of accomplices is bringing him into the country through secret channels, and what are the routes they are using?" Galijašević asked. He emphasized that these are priority security issues because they involve threats to the constitutional order of the country and its overall security, which is the responsibility of the Intelligence-Security Agency /OBA/. The OBA should have been monitoring all these routes for the past six years. "Migrants are arriving in BiH after the collapse of the terrorist organization 'Islamic State' in Iraq and Syria. A significant part of this began with Russia's intervention in Syria and the victory of the military structures of the Arab Syrian Army under the legal President Bashar al-Assad. So, these are defeated terrorists, people trained for warfare, who shoot and throw bombs and who have done nothing else in their lives because otherwise they would have brought some diplomas with them," said Galijašević. He believes that some of these illegal migrants are on their way to Ukraine, where they may eventually join one of the nationalist battalions under the control of the Ukrainian military. "These defeated jihadists and terrorists must be treated as the most significant security challenge and as a threat to the constitutional order of BiH. They must not be allowed to hide in BiH and have sympathizers and supporters," concluded Galijašević. In the village of Zovi Do, in the municipality of Nevesinje, the police neutralized an individual last night who, while shouting "Allahu Akbar," shot at police officers who had surrounded the house where he was located. This individual used two types of automatic and semi-automatic weapons and at one point threw a hand grenade at police, having previously ignored the police's calls to surrender.