NEW BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE INSTITUTE ELECTED

SARAJEVO, APRIL 7 /SRNA/ – A new Board of Directors of the Missing Persons Institute of BiH has been elected, consisting of Nikola Perišić representing the Serbs, Šimun Novaković representing the Croats, and Suad Hasanović representing the Bosniaks, SRNA has learned.

Perišić had previously been a member of the Board, Novaković applied for the position as the only candidate from the Croat group, while Hasanović comes from the State Investigation and Protection Agency /SIPA/. The three members of the Board of Directors rotate in the position of chair every eight months, and decisions are made by consensus. The Institute’s Steering Board is responsible for appointing members of the Board of Directors, which announced the call for applications in February. The terms of the previous members of the Board of Directors of the Missing Persons Institute of BiH – Nikola Perišić, Marko Jurišić, and Saliha Đuderija, expired last year, and since then they had been serving in an acting capacity. The new Board is the sixth since 2005, when the BiH Missing Persons Institute was established. Families of missing persons from Republika Srpska have numerous criticisms and complaints regarding the Institute’s work, including toward those who come to the institution as representatives of the Serb people. Republika Srpska is searching for 1,640 missing soldiers and civilians, while the remains of around 600 unidentified persons are kept in three memorial ossuaries. Officials from Republika Srpska have repeatedly warned that the process of searching for missing Serbs has stalled since the Institute became operational in 2008, stating that the search would likely have been completed by now had the process remained under the jurisdiction of the entity-level commissions. In addition to Perišić, previous members of the Board from Republika Srpska included Milan Bogdanić and Milutin Mišić. From the Federation of BiH, representing the Bosniak people, members included Amor Mašović, Mujo Hadžiomerović and Saliha Đuderija, while Marko Jurišić has been a member on behalf of the Croatian Defence Council /HVO/ from the Federation of BiH since the Institute’s founding.