CUSTODY REQUESTED AND ORDERED FOR A TURKISH CITIZEN CHARGED WITH SMUGGLING OF PERSONS

The previously accused Turkish citizen Sahin Sogutlua (1970) was deprived of his liberty by the BiH Border Police, on the orders of the BiH Prosecutor’s Office, upon entering BiH at the Sarajevo airport after he had been abroad for a long time and was unavailable to the BiH judiciary.

The case prosecutor of the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, after hearing the accused, sent a motion to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina to order the custody measure.

The custody measure was proposed due to the risk of the flight of the accused, who is a foreign citizen and who, upon leaving BiH, would once again become unavailable to the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH and the Court of BiH, in accordance with Article 132 (1) (a) of the Criminal Procedure Code of BiH.

The confirmed indictment dated January 15 of this year states that on July 13, 2022, the accused, in agreement with a person known to him, for an agreed monetary compensation in the amount of EUR 600, transported eight citizens of the Republic of Türkyie from Sarajevo to the area of Orašje, with the intention of further transferring them from the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina by boat across the Drina River to the territory of the Republic of Croatia, and thus acted contrary to Article 6 of the Protocol against Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air which supplements the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

After deciding on the Prosecution’s motion, the Court of BiH ordered custody for the aforementioned accused.