Within the operation codenamed “River”, activities on depriving of liberty and search of a total of 5 suspects charged with the criminal offences of Organising a Group of People or an Association for the Purpose of Perpetrating the Criminal Offense of Smuggling of Migrants in violation of Article 189a of the Criminal Code of BiH were carried out in several cities in northern BiH.

The persons deprived of liberty have been under intensive investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH and the Border Police and are suspected of engaging in organised smuggling of migrants from high migration risk countries in 2019.

The search and deprivation of liberty activities are being carried out in Prijedor, Kostajnica, Kozarska Dubica, Novi Grad and other places.

The evidence collected indicates that the suspects had contacts with persons from the territories of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, and that they repeatedly smuggled a number of groups consisting of several dozens of illegal migrants across the territory of BiH further into the territory of the Republic of Croatia, Republic of Slovenia and other EU countries for large sums of money.

In this way, the suspects acquired illegal proceeds in large sums and inflicted damage to the aforementioned countries in the form of illegal migrations and problems caused by the illegal migrations.

The suspects will be handed over to the case prosecutor of the Special Department for Organised Crime, Economic Crime and Corruption of the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, who will interview the suspects and then decide on filing a motion to order them into custody and other activities in the case.

The operation codenamed “River” is a coordinated international operation conducted by several countries to combat illegal migration in the Western Balkans.