The Moldovan prosecutor’s office has charged five more people on suspicion of participating in camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina run by instructors linked to Moscow.
The investigation involving four men and one woman has been completed, the Office for Combating Organized Crime and Special Cases of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Moldova announced. They are four Moldovan citizens and one Finnish citizen of Ukrainian origin, all between 27 and 50 years old.
According to the Moldovan prosecutor’s office, two suspects, a man and a woman, are accused of participating in the organization. According to the indictment, they were supposed to coordinate groups of participants in violent demonstrations. Both mentioned persons are under house arrest.
They were recruited through Telegram and Yandex applications by people who were previously accused of participating in the camp.
The three suspects, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, were also invited to participate in the training by a person who was previously accused of participating in the camp. The invitation was sent to them during a sports recreation in Chisinau.
“A female person approached them and proposed a ‘sports training’ in Romania that would pay them 400 to 500 dollars a week,” the Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement from last week, adding that the money was to be paid in cryptocurrency.
But, according to information from the Intelligence and Security Service of Moldova, after arriving in Romania, their journey continued to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they were “left without passports and phones.”
“They were then, according to the statements, transported to a camp in the forest, where there were several tents and tables with computers, where other participants were taught how to operate drones. They were, according to the statements, taught for one to two weeks by persons who spoke the Russian language. The focus of the training was operating drones, tactics for creating panic and chaos, breaking through police cordons, preparing incendiary objects”, claims the Prosecutor’s Office, adding that the participants were also taught “elements of psychology”.
The persons were arrested upon their return to Moldova, and drones, equipment for controlling drones, cameras, mechanisms for dropping objects and pyrotechnic objects were confiscated from one detained person.
Pamphlets containing verbal and graphic messages of “intolerance and hostility between different religious groups” and promoting the idea of ”one religion and one church” intended to create polarization among religious groups were seized from the second suspect.
Detektor previously published research in which the location of the camp organized in Serbia in 2024 was identified, which is connected to the camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, according to the claims of the Moldovan prosecutor’s office, was located near Banja Luka. Some participants of the camp in BiH also stayed in the camp in Serbia.
Five of them are charged with the criminal offense of organizing or leading a riot, for which a prison sentence of between four and eight years is assumed. The person with whom the pamphlets were found is additionally charged with inciting intolerance.
In addition to the aforementioned indictment, two separate trials against a total of four people accused of participating in Russian camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they were trained to cause riots in Moldova in 2024, are ongoing at the District Court in Chisinau.
The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina recently requested the competent institutions of Moldova to provide information on the participation of citizens of this country in Russian camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Last week, the Moldovan police searched 50 locations and persons associated with the camp organized in Banja Koviljača in Serbia in 2025. Like the camps in BiH and Serbia organized in 2024, the camp in Banja Koviljača is linked to foreign instructors, citizens of Moldova, and a plan to cause disorder in the country.
During the search, the police confiscated SIM cards, credit cards, some of which were issued in Russia, Serbian dinars, 20 passports with Serbian stamps, binoculars and ammunition.
The investigation in Moldova continues, reports BIRN BiH.
(TYPE/Source: Detektor.ba)
