War crimes indictee Oric "appointed as adviser to minister"

War crimes indictee Oric "appointed as adviser to minister"

The Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FBiH) is the Muslim-Croat entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The newspaper quoted its sources as saying that "the story about the appointment of Oric in this ministry has been going on for a while, and now obviously the conditions have been met to bring the procedure to a close."

The article added that appointments of persons with "suspicious war past" as advisers in the Federal Ministry for Issues of Defenders and Invalids of the Homeland War "seem to have become common."

The daily mentions that former minister Zukan Helez was advised by Besim Hodzic, who was the commander of a prisoner camp setup in a Bugojno high school during the war in Bosnia in the first half of the 1990s, where "a large number of Croats were imprisoned and tortured - some of them calling him (Hodzic) out publicly for his misdeeds and demanding his resignation."

Meanwhile, new minister Salik Bukvarevic will be advised by "a person on trial" - i.e., Oric, a wartime Muslim commander who as been charged for killing prisoners in Bratunac and Srebrenica in 1992.

Earlier, the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina said it was under pressure because of the case.