The Republic of Srpska

On the territory of the Republic of Srpska, the security situation was assessed as good and satisfactory – this is one of the conclusions of today’s Extended staff meeting of the Republic of Srpska Minister of the Interior, held in Doboj. On this occasion, the activities of the Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior during the first six months of this year were analysed. The Republic of Srpska Minister of the Interior, Mr Siniša Karan, said that, during this period, the members of the Ministry had successfully performed their constitutional and legal obligation to protect the constitutional order of the Republic of Srpska as well as life and property of its citizens, and added that he was pleased with the activities of all police administrations. Minister Karan stated that all the activities of the Ministry were directed towards the citizens who were regularly informed on all the undertaken repressive and preventive activities, and that about 1,200 announcements were published. ‘It is crucial to promote good policies of the Ministry in communication with the media and citizens and support good police work’, Minister Karan said. He pointed out that, during the first half of the year, there were public gatherings for which security was successfully provided even though the task was challenging - one of them was the international ATP tournament in Banja Luka which was assessed as excellent from the aspect of security provision. After presenting the fact that the number of committed criminal offences in the last six months had slightly increased, Minister explained that this was the result of increased activities of the members of the Ministry of the Interior. ‘The fact is that the number of minors as perpetrators of minor and criminal offences has increased’, Minister Karan said, and added that, after the tragic event in Belgrade, the Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior had undertaken several measures that referred to peer violence, and one of them was introducing a school police officer from September this year. Furthermore, Minister Karan pointed to the outstanding results of the police in the field of cybercrime thanks to technological capacities at their disposal. He added that superior results were also achieved in the field of organised crime – he pointed out the action ‘Transporter’, for which the Ministry obtained favourable assessment from EUROPOL and other relevant international institutions.  Police Director, Mr Siniša Kostrešević, said that the Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior recorded 3,563 criminal offences in the first 6 months of this year, which is 11.3% more than in the same period the year before. He said that is was worrying that out of the total number of persons who were reported, 875 of them were returnees in the commission of criminal offences and 95 were minors. ‘In the field of countering the illicit trafficking of narcotic drugs, 1,337 cases were detected, and 186 of them were defined as criminal offences and 1,151 as minor offenc