Check fingerprints of illegal migrants, says Minister as Bosnia uncovers two terrorists among the migrants

Bosnian Security Minister Fahrudin Radoncic on Friday said that Pakistan’s Ambassador refused to cooperate with Bosnia and have their authorities check the fingerprints of illegal migrants in the country, even though Bosnia already uncovered two terrorists among the migrants.

Radoncic’s statement came after Bosnia’s Bosniak Presidency member Sefik Dzaferovic and Foreign Minister Bisera Turkovic met with Pakistan’s Ambassador Muhammad Khalid Rao.

“We begged the Ambassador of Pakistan as well as ambassadors of other states from which we have a large influx of migrants to go through their databases and send us identities of migrants who will be photographed and have their fingerprints taken once they enter one of our migrant centres”, Radonic said.

He said that even then, the Ambassador refused to reveal the migrants’ identities based on fingerprint data and photographs.

“I will say that based on the fingerprints we gathered, we uncovered two terrorists among the migrants. Their fingerprints were found on weapons and weapons cases in a third country. Our security service did a fantastic job,” Radoncic said.

Meanwhile, a press release from the Presidency said that Ambassador Rao has informed the Presidency Chairman of Pakistan Embassy’s full cooperation with the Bosnian institutions in the fight against illegal migration and that this commitment “never was and never will be brought into question”.

Earlier, Radoncic had suggested that migrants should be deported from the country saying that refugees and migrants posed an economic burden amid the pandemic — as well as a security threat.

He said that migrants who could not prove their identity by providing passports or other forms of identification would be imprisoned rather than accommodated in migrant camps.

Migrants and refugees have been camping out at the Vucjak camp site by Bihac for years in the hope of crossing the border of Bosnia-Herzegovina into Croatia and thus reaching EU territory.

However, Croatia has put strict border controls and fortifications in place, with mounting reports of violent pushbacks into Bosnian territory leaving would-be asylum seekers in the EU stuck in a limbo in Bosnia-Herzegovina.