Tensions between Bosnia’s Serb authorities and international envoy Christian Schmidt deepened after a Serb minister sent a Nazi-era SS helmet along with an incendiary letter to the German administrator.
The Bosnian Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations sparked controversy on Thursday, November 20th, with the stunt, which he shared on Instagram. Staša Košarac disputes Schmidt’s mandate in Bosnia and Herzegovina—which his party claims is not approved by the United Nations Security Council, meaning Schmidt is operating in the country illegally.
Košarac—a member of Milorad Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD)—took to social media and claimed he
sent the occupier Schmidt the Nazi helmet, together with an accompanying ‘Letter to the Occupier’, in which I stated that it was not a gift but an heirloom of Schmidt’s ancestors, whose values this occupier upholds.
Košarac’s letter described Schmidt as “the embodiment of political evil and ill intent towards Republika Srpska,” whose “unconstitutional manipulations” had devastated democracy in Bosnia—all while orchestrating a politically motivated trial of Dodik “in an attempt to weaken Republika Srpska and nullify the free will of the Serb people in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
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