The State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) officers arrested Bakir Dautbašić, the secretary of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Ministry of Security, and Bilsena Šahman in Sarajevo this morning.
The prosecutors allege that during last month these two tried to intimidate and bribe a witness Azra Sarić to alter her testimony at the trial of Naser Kelmendi.
Next Wednesday morning, Sarić is scheduled to give testimony about the murder of Ramiz Delalić Ćelo before the Basic court in Priština, Kosovo. Sarić is identified as Delalić’s former girlfriend by the Kosovo Special Prosecutor’s Office’s indictment. Prosecutors allege that Kelmendi organized Delalić’s murder to protect his narcotics business.
Delalić, a Sarajevo kingpin, was at war with Kelmendi’s organized group before he was shot dead in front of his Sarajevo apartment on June 27, 2007.
The indictment names Fahrudin Radončić, the president of the Alliance for Better Future (SBB) and a legislator with the BiH House of Peoples, as a member of a criminal organization involved in plotting the assassination of Delalić. Radončić earlier denied any connection with the murder and said that he had not been indicted.
Dautbašić and Šahman are members of Radončić’s party which nominated Dautbašić for the post of the BiH Minister of Traffic and Communication despite the arrest.
In the last general elections, the party nominated Šahman for the Federation of BiH House of Representatives, but she failed to win a term. Šahman began career as a boss of a pharmacy belonging to Public Institution “Sarajevo Pharmacies” chain.
Apart from being charged as the mastermind behind Delalić’s murder, Kelmendi is accused of running a major drug trafficking ring. The BiH Prosecutor’s Office started an investigation against him in Sept. 2012.
Kelmendi fled BiH promptly before he was arrested in Priština the following May. The Special Prosecutor’s Office say his major business from 2000 to 2012—was trafficking large amounts of drugs from Afghanistan and Turkey into Europe. The Kelmendi trial began in Priština in January 2015.
