Bosnia Police Investigate Reported Paramilitary Group

Bosnian intelligence authorities are investigating media reports that a pro-Russian paramilitary unit has been set up with the approval of the country's Serb leader, a police source said Thursday

Sarajevo, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Jan, 2018 ) :Bosnian intelligence authorities are investigating media reports that a pro-Russian paramilitary unit has been set up with the approval of the country's Serb leader, a police source said Thursday.

"The agency of investigation and protection (SIPA) is checking the allegations related to the association Srbska Cast (the Serb Honour)," a SIPA spokesperson told AFP, giving no further information.

Bosnia's Security Minister Dragan Mektic said the organisation from neighbouring Serbia, which has a branch in Bosnia, was a "paramilitary formation", without providing details. The website that published the report claimed Srbska Cast was linked to Milorad Dodik, the President of Republika Srpska, the Serb-run entity in Bosnia, who has denied the claims.

According to Zurnal.info, the formation of a pro-Dodik paramilitary unit is a key goal of the organisation. Its members have denied the accusation. Some 15 members of the group were photographed in Banja Luka, in the north of the country, earlier this month attending a divisive public holiday celebration for Bosnian Serbs -- banned by the country's constitutional court.

"There are no paramilitaries in Republika Srpska," Dodik said, denying that he had sought to form such a group. "If they are being organised secretly we will find them and they will be locked up and eliminated." Once a darling of the west, the Bosnian Serb strongman now shows more sympathies for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On January 9 Dodik decorated Alexandre Zaldostanov, nicknamed Khirourg (the Surgeon), the leader of pro-Putin motorcycle club "Wolfs of the Night". Mektic, a Bosnian Serb and a fierce opponent to Dodik, is considered a pro-Western politician and analysts forecast that their parties will lead a tough campaigns in the general elections in autumn.

He urged Bosnian prosecutors to "react quickly" but no official probe has been launched so far. In accordance with the Dayton agreement that ended Bosnia's 1992-1995 bloody war, the country is divided into two semi-independent entities -- a Muslim-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska -- linked by loose Federal institutions.

A half of 3.5 million citizens are Muslims, a third are Serbs, while Croats make some 15 percent of the population.