prijava
SARAJEVO, June 21 (FENA) - Smuggling of migrants is a serious issue and all the institutions should deal with it, said today Minister of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina Dragan Mektić.
At a press conference after today's session of the Operational Headquarters for migrant issues, he warned that the smuggling of migrants has even become a more lucrative business than drug trafficking, and called on the prosecution to form a team of prosecutors that will deal exclusively with this issue.
He also stated that there were cases when persons who transport illegal immigrants were discovered, the police seize the vehicle, and then the prosecutor's office gives it back to them. Some police officers who arrested the perpetrators of these crimes warned about such practice.
“As for the recent meeting in Brussels, I thought that the European Union will be able to help out more, especially considering that the greatest number of migrants come from EU countries - Bulgaria and Greece, but we do not expect anything significantly and therefore we need to protect our own border better,” stressed Mektić.
Minister Mektić called on politicians not to use this problem for their election campaigns, as it was the case yesterday when MPs in the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH discussed the migrant issue.
However, asked by the journalists why he did not send the requested information on the state of security in BiH in May this year, with particular reference to the issue of migration, Mektić only said that he could not tell exactly “what the MPs had in mind when they warned him about his controversial statements.”
He also announced that, in ten days or so, the Ušivak Barracks in Hadžići and the Agrokomerc facility in Velika Kladuša will be ready to accommodate migrants, adding that the estimates show that there are between 1,600 and 1,800 migrants in the Una-Sana Canton.
This year, 6,982 migrants entered BiH, but only about 30 percent of them are still in BiH, claims Minister Mektić.
Of that number, only 611 migrants applied for asylum in BiH.
(FENA) S. R.
