POLICE INVESTIGATE DESTRUCTION OF SHELTER NEAR BANOVIĆI, DUTY PROSECUTOR NOTIFIED

TUZLA, NOVEMBER 5 /SRNA/ – Police in Tuzla Canton are investigating the destruction of a shelter in the Banovići municipality, and the duty cantonal prosecutor has been notified, the canton's Interior Ministry Police Administration told SRNA.

On October 29, a 52-year-old man from Prnjavor, identified by the initials M.S., reported to police that unknown persons had destroyed a wooden shelter over the previous three days in Aljkovići, in the Banovići municipality. He and his friends had built the shelter on a privately owned plot belonging to a person with the initials R.Đ.

"Police went to the scene, where the allegations in the report were confirmed, and carried out an on-site investigation," the Police Administration said.

Police said they were investigating the case on the instructions of the duty prosecutor of the Tuzla Canton Prosecutor's Office.

The Police Administration said the structure was "located on a private plot in the village of Aljkovići, two to three kilometers from the Gradina Orthodox cemetery."

The Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Serbs in the Federation of BiH said that "at the Gradina Orthodox cemetery in the village of Lozna, in the Banovići municipality, a shelter was cut down. It had been built by Serbs who fled the village, so they would have a place to gather for memorial services and the village patron saint's day."

The committee's president, Đorđe Radanović, told SRNA that attacks on Orthodox cemeteries and Serb property in the Federation of BiH kept recurring because the entity's judicial institutions had failed to respond in any concrete way.

He said the latest damage near Banovići was not an isolated case. Orthodox cemeteries had been damaged at several locations during the year, he said, including Trnovac near Travnik and Vučinići near Kladanj, where gravestones had been desecrated several times.