Bosnian authorities on Thursday detained the chief justice of the country’s top court and a former intelligence chief over the pair’s alleged role in obstructing an investigation into an illegal phone-tapping operation.
According to Bosnia’s prosecutor general, the judge Ranko Debevec and intelligence boss Osman Mehmedagic are accused of having “set up illegal wiretaps targeting judges of the Bosnian State Court and employees of the Prosecutor’s Office” in 2020.
The two men were arrested this week at the request of a prosecutor overseeing the investigation into the incident, who claimed that the pair had tried to obstruct the probe.
“The Bosnian State Court has ordered the detention of the suspects Ranko Debevec and Osman Mehmedagic for a maximum of 30 days,” said a court statement.
Mehmedagic headed Bosnia’s Intelligence and Security Agency from November 2015 to January 2023. He was later hit with US sanctions for abuse of power along with “significant corruption” and links to “criminal networks”.
The former intelligence chief is considered to be close to the former Bosniak member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency Bakir Izetbegovic, who leads one of the country’s main political parties.
Debevec has been the chief justice of the State Court since 2016 and was elected in January to a new six-year term. He was suspended from his post on Wednesday.
Corruption and abuse of power have long dogged Bosnia, as the country grapples with myriad political dysfunction in the three decades following a brutal civil war that left 100,000 people dead and displaced more than two million.
