BIRN details the creation of a shadowy, heavily-armed and potentially illegal police unit at the exclusive, 24-hour beck and call of the man who led Bosnia’s border police for nine years and is now a fugitive from arrest. On December 30, 2014, the then head of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s border …

As Nizam* sped toward Italy on a crowded migrant boat, he filmed what he believed was the final stretch of his harrowing journey. The 21-year-old house painter from Bangladesh held up his phone, framing his face before panning to roughly 50 others packed onto the white fiberglass vessel. Behind him, …

Their plight was already dire, but in the evening of June 21, 2024, things got even worse for Bilal and the other refugees and migrants trying to cross the border of Bosnia and Herzegovina with European Union member Croatia. Asylum seekers euphemistically call it ‘The Game’ – the moment they …