The Bosnian authorities said they will investigate people who expressed support online for a gunman who killed his ex-wife, two other people and himself while livestreaming the shooting spree in the town of Gradacac on Instagram.
The Interior Ministry in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Federation entity said it will investigate people who voiced approval on social media for Nermin Sulejmanovic, who killed three people in the town of Gradacac on Friday while livestreaming the shooting spree on Instagram before shooting himself.
“The Federal Interior Minister, Ramo Isak, will ask the Federal Police Administration and the Interior Ministry of the Tuzla Canton to investigate all individuals who, on social media, supported the murderer and glorified the crime committed after the gruesome murders in Gradacac,” said Ervin Musinovic, the Federal Interior Minister’s chief of office.
He added that “all individuals found to have committed the crime of sending abhorrent messages in support of the murderer” will have criminal reports filed against them.
The violence began when Sulejmanovic, a former bodybuilder with a criminal record, first killed his ex-wife on a livestream on Meta’s social media platform Instagram.
Sulemajnovic started his livestream by saying that viewers “will see what a live murder looks like”, then took a gun and shot his ex-wife.
He shot dead two more people and wounded three others, including one police officer.
After police staged a major operation to track him down, Sulejmanovic committed suicide in front of police officers.
The video showing the murder of his ex-wife was online for two hours on Sulemajnovic’s Instagram account, which at the time of shooting had some 11,000 followers.
The case has raised new questions about the failure of Meta’s internal safety procedures, which should prevent the circulation of such violent videos.
Some 15,000 people watched Sulejmanovic’s first livestream, with 300 people posting ‘likes’ on it.
BIRN’s digital rights monitors registered that his first live feed was shared 286 times before it was removed after a self-organised public campaign on social media calling on people to report the video to Instagram moderators.
The police also said that their cyber department was in communication with Meta, which removed the video 20 minutes after they sent a request.
However, despite the video being removed, Sulejmanovic still had access to his account and he began a second livestream, speaking about what he had done.
“I shot at a police officer, but he escaped. He escaped in a Skoda, and I couldn’t catch up with him in my BMW,” he said.
His account was later on removed by Meta, but not fast enough in order to stop the sharing of his videos.
In the time between the first and second video, his account gained more than 3,000 followers.
Although some mainstream online media in Bosnia in Serbia published screenshots from the video with less explicit content, BIRN’s monitors did not register that any media outlets republished the actual murder video.