The year 2025 was marked, among other things, by numerous court processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which ultimately resulted in several sentences of over 40 years in prison.
Court trials were conducted for numerous criminal acts that shook the Bosnian public in the previous period.
They resulted in the fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina’s prisons are now full of people who will probably never see the light of day in freedom again.
Verdicts for horrific crimes in Sarajevo
In 2025, the trial of Goran Ravlić and his mother Leđiba was held for one of the most brutal murders in post-war Sarajevo.
They suspected that from mid-May to June 28, 2024, they mentally and physically abused Goran’s wife, Nermina, in an apartment in Sarajevo’s Pofalići neighborhood, and eventually killed her. The manner in which they treated Nermina before she passed away, which the Prosecution described in the indictment, is especially gruesome.
The two are accused of initially denying the 38-year-old any kind of communication with the outside world, destroying her mobile phone and forbidding her to go out of the apartment.
After that, they starved her, cut her hair, pulled out her hair, tied her hands so that she could not resist. They sexually abused her and inflicted more than 100 injuries, including bites, burns, fractures and injuries in the genital area. She later died from her injuries.
In September, Goran and Leđiba Ravlić were each sentenced to 45 years in prison for this murder.
Just seven days after this, another verdict of over 40 years in prison was handed down. Mirza Duran was sentenced to 43 years before the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo for the brutal murder of Nadira Sahačić in the Ciglane settlement.
According to the indictment, on August 18 and 19, 2024, Duran entered Nadira Sahačić’s apartment in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Ciglane, initially hitting her with his fists on her body, squeezing her hands, then hitting her with two kitchen knives, causing her intense pain and suffering, after which he killed her.
As stated in the indictment, Nadira Sahačić was massacred with two knives, and in the end literally slaughtered.
During the explanation of the verdict, Judge Tin Begtasevic presented some of the gruesome details of this murder.
It was emphasized that Duran knowingly entered the premises, specifically Nadira Sahačić’s apartment, and inflicted severe injuries on the victim with a kitchen knife, which caused her intense pain and suffering.
Duran punched the victim and inflicted multiple injuries and stab wounds all over his body. In the area of the neck, Duran inflicted 10 cuts on the victim with a knife, cut her tongue, as a result of which she bled to death.
The judge emphasized that Sahačić was killed in a violent and cruel manner. According to the expert’s report, death was caused by cutting the veins, which caused the victim intense suffering.
Duran himself confessed to the murder before he was tried by telling the ambulance medic to check “if the woman is alive because he doesn’t know if he managed to slaughter her completely.”
As the reason for the 43-year prison sentence, it was stated that the murder was carried out in a cruel manner and that the victim was inflicted with an enormous amount of pain.
Adem Shuman received another sentence of 40 or more years in prison for the murder of the young man Faris Pendek, which shook Bosnia and Herzegovina in January 2024.
Shuman was charged that on January 28, 2024, around 11:30 p.m., at a busy intersection in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Otoka, without a driver’s license and for no reason, he blocked the way of four friends who were in a Citroen with a Peugeot car.
The indictment states that Shuman opened the window and addressed them with the words: “Why are you looking at me, stop here.”
“He approached their car and with the intention of dealing with them, without getting out of the car, moved to the passenger seat and punched two of them through the open window, then took a gun from the cassette and hit them again with the handle of the gun. After that, he fired one bullet through the open window that hit Faris Pendek in the chest and killed him. After the murder, Shuman ran away and found the accused Elmedina Gradišić and Mersim Saljević, who helped him hide the evidence and cover up the tracks,” the indictment said.
In September, another sentence for murder was pronounced, this time to Nihad Sarajkić. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison, also before the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo, because on June 10, 2024, he killed Anel Krša on the Wilson Promenade in Sarajevo. The murder happened at 4:50 p.m. when a large number of citizens were present at this location.
“After they had previously agreed to meet and spent more than an hour there, the accused fired sixteen shots at the victim from a distance of about one meter, 15 of which hit him. He fell to the ground and while he was lying helplessly in pain, Sarajkić approached him and cruelly kicked him in the head area at least three times. The accused then disassembled the gun, put the parts on the bench and waited there for the police officers of the MUP of Sarajevo Canton, who arrested him,” the indictment stated.
The murder in Prijedor and the massacre in Sanski Most
Near the end of the year, on December 15, justice was served in the case of the murder of the head of the Criminal Police Department of the Prijedor Police Department, Radenko Bašić.
Aleksandar Miljatović was sentenced to 34 and Dalibor Railić 29 years in prison for that murder.
The head of the Criminal Police Sector of the Prijedor Police Administration, Radenko Bašić, was shot dead in 2022 in the Pećani neighborhood of Prijedor. The killer shot him in the back of the head from close range, which was later confirmed by an autopsy.
The killer used a silencer, so the locals did not hear the shot. Bašić was killed at 6:50 a.m. when he went to work at the Prijedor Police Department. After the murder, the police blocked off the whole of Prijedor and several people were detained.
And finally, another sentence of over 40 years. It was awarded to Mehemed Vukalić for a triple murder in Sanski Most in the summer of 2024.
In August 2024, he killed the director of the institution Nijaz Halilović, the secretary Nisveta Kljunić and the English teacher Gordana Midžan in the Gymnasium in Sanski Most.
After the murder, he shot himself in the chest. He survived thanks to the quick intervention of doctors at the Clinical Center in Banja Luka.
The indictment against him was confirmed in November last year. According to the indictment, Vukalić is also accused of illegally possessing an automatic rifle – a Kalashnikov, with which he committed the triple murder.
Which prisoners have long since aged in prison
Edib Buljubasic is probably one of the most recognizable names when we talk about prisoners.
He is currently serving a total prison sentence of 54 years, which is the longest sentence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. judiciary, as a sum of several verdicts for serious criminal offenses committed by him before and after the war.
He was convicted for the first time even before the war for robbery and the murder of the “Zenicatrans” porter, after which, released on the weekend, he also killed his father. Later, as established by court verdicts, he killed his unmarried wife with an ax and his brother’s wife with scissors.
In addition to these murders, Buljubasic also found himself before the judicial authorities due to the events of 1992, when he was accused and tried as a member of the Croatian Defense Forces (HOS) of war crimes against Serb civilians detained in the Dretelj camp near Capljina.
Jasminko Jašarević from Mostar is also a well-known name from the world of black chronicles.
The cantonal court in Mostar sentenced him to 42 years in prison after years of being linked to a series of brutal murders.
Originally, even earlier, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for the murder of Ramiza Rahimić, which he committed in 2005 in Mostar. Later, he was also convicted for the murder of prominent Mostar photojournalist Ante Boras.
When we talk about the world of black chronicles in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the name of Zijad Turković is indispensable.
In 2015, Turković was sentenced to 40 years in prison by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in a repeated trial, after the first-instance panel sentenced him to 45 years. He and his criminal organization were convicted of five murders, attempted murder, robbery and drug trafficking. In addition to Turković, his associate Milenko Lakić was also sentenced to a long-term prison sentence, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison. If he lives, Turković could be released from prison when he is 84 years old.
Tomislav Petrović from Gornja Lipnica near Tuzla is also a person serving a prison sentence of 40 years.
He is remembered as the perpetrator of one of the most terrible mass murders in the post-war history of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On May 29, 2008, in the early morning hours, Petrović, armed with a pistol, began a bloody campaign in the hamlet of Trieste and the surrounding villages, during which he killed six of his neighbors and relatives, and seriously wounded another person.
Muriz Brkić and Avdija Selimović, who killed Arnela Đogić in Olovo in 2016, are serving prison terms of 40 years each.
In his verdict, Judge Enes Malićbegović described in detail the crime of murdering Arnela Đogić. Brkić and Selimović killed Arnela in a particularly cruel way, and after the murder, they threw her body down a cliff about 70 meters high. After a particularly cruel murder, Selimović and Brkić went to one of the cafés in Olovo and celebrated late into the night.
Veselin Vlahović, also known as Batko or the “Monster from Grbavice”, is also serving a long prison sentence. He was a member of paramilitary formations during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, accused and convicted of the most serious war crimes committed against civilians in the Sarajevo settlements of Grbavica, Vraca and Kovačići in 1992.
The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina found him guilty on more than 60 counts of the indictment and on March 29, 2013 sentenced him to 45 years in prison, which was the longest sentence for war crimes in the BiH judiciary.
After the war, Vlahović hid and engaged in crime abroad, and he was arrested in 2010 in Spain and extradited to Bosnia and Herzegovina, writes Klix.
