Senior judicial official: Foreign embassy working against top judicial body

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The deputy head of Bosnia’s High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJCP), Ruzica Jukic, refused to reveal whether she has evidence that a foreign embassy is trying to dissolve her institution, as she claimed in a recent Facebook post, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) reported on Tuesday.

The HJPC is Bosnia's top judicial institution, in charge of naming judges and prosecutors and disciplining them.

The head of the institution, Milan Tegeltija, came under fire over corruption allegations earlier this year.

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Jukic said she was informed that the family of Dzenan Memic, a young man whose murder remains unsolved since 2016, plans to stage protests and blame the HJPC for the lack of progress in the investigation – a plan she claimed was put together by certain foreign embassies, BIRN reported.

Jukic also said that she knows that the independent expert the EU sent to Bosnia to help in improving the country's judiciary, Reinhard Priebe, plans to submit a negative report about the state of affairs in the judiciary and that he and the US Embassy in Bosnia will request the that Bosnia's international administrator, Valentin Inzko, dismisses the HJPC.

Tegeltija also confirmed Jukic's claims, saying he came across similar information.

The US Embassy called the statements “inventions that do not deserve commented on,” BIRN reported.