"Black Raven", a source close to OBS confided to Reporter, is an operation involving surveillance and phone tapping of public figures who take a critical stance toward the government, that is, toward the ruling coalition.
"We are not talking about phone tapping of politicians exclusively but of other key people including newspaper editors and journalists in certain media companies in Srpska," claims our source.
Our source further says that special attention during phone tapping operations is devoted to individuals who have telephone or some other contacts with Belgrade.
Retirement for doubters: For the majority of people it is spying on, the government has determined that wiretapping is not enough so it is also keeping them under surveillance. Namely, "persons of security interest" are tailed day and night.
According to our source's claims, the majority of the officers of the Republic of Srpska Army (VRS) are being phone tapped and kept under surveillance in the same way "in order to ascertain their loyalty to the RS government".
OBS has obtained modern phone tapping equipment from abroad and paid approximately $500,000 for it. Allegedly several senior officers of OBS with a sense of moral and democratic integrity opposed Operation "Black Raven", after which they were promptly dismissed or sent to retirement.
By the decision of the RS National Assembly, OBS is under the control of the RS government.
The last phone tapping affair to shake the RS occurred in 1997 when members of the former state security service loyal to the former president of RS [Biljana Plavsic] discovered information that the president herself, as well as the leaders of the former opposition, were targets of phone tapping.