Baroness Arminka Helić, a member of the British House of Lords and a Muslim from Bosnia and Herzegovina who identifies herself as the former Chief of Staff to the UK’s then-Foreign Secretary William Hague, misled the readers of this respected publication in her May 6 op-ed in The Jerusalem Post, titled “No political persecution: Explaining a legal and constitutional crisis in Bosnia.”
To clarify for the readership how Baroness Helić has manipulated the facts and to expose the series of untruths contained in her piece, it is first necessary to highlight several important aspects of her biography.
A Muslim woman from Bosnia and Herzegovina, she rose swiftly in London—from a refugee to Chief of Staff to the Foreign Secretary, and eventually to the House of Lords. This trajectory alone indicates that she is an exceptionally skilled operative.
Within the British public sphere, it was widely believed that Baroness Helić wielded significant influence over Foreign Secretary Hague’s foreign policy decisions during his term from 2010 to 2014. She served not only as his Chief of Staff but also as his principal adviser.
Some assessments even went so far as to speculate about a deeper personal closeness between the two—claims which were never substantiated. Regardless of such rumours, there is little doubt that during that period, Baroness Helić was a prominent figure in shaping UK foreign policy—something that sparked concern among segments of the British public.
Many felt that her wartime traumas should not have been allowed to influence the foreign policy of the United Kingdom. Of course, her persistent anti-Serb rhetoric has rarely posed a problem for the British public. However, her recurring negative stance toward Israel has, at times, raised eyebrows.
It was publicly speculated that she was the key figure behind the UK government’s condemnation of Israel’s interception of the Turkish flotilla headed for Gaza in May 2010. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, she has repeatedly voiced criticisms of Israeli operations in Gaza.
Nonetheless, despite her past critical positions, she chose to publish an opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post—her first since assuming public office. Unsurprisingly, she did not use this opportunity to soften her criticism of Israel. Rather, she weaponized her well-known anti-Serb narrative to propagate a series of falsehoods about Republika Srpska.
In an apparent attempt to win over readers, Baroness Helić sought to minimize Sarajevo’s contemporary antisemitism by drawing a sharp distinction between the Ustaša regime in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II and the Bosnian Muslims, whom she portrays as having helped Jews rather than participated in their persecution or extermination.
This is, without question, a falsehood that the Baroness, a sitting member of the British House of Lords, has deliberately fed to the readers of the respected Jerusalem Post. During the era of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), Bosnian Muslims were an integral part of this fascist puppet regime headquartered in Zagreb, and, alongside Croats, participated in the persecution and killing of Serbs, Jews, and Roma.
In 1941, Muslims in Sarajevo welcomed Wehrmacht soldiers with flowers in the streets, hailing them as liberators. The NDH’s leader, Ante Pavelić, went so far as to describe them as "the flowers of the Croatian people." The Deputy Prime Minister of the NDH was a Bosnian Muslim, Ademaga Mešić, while his fellow countryman Džafer Kulenović also served as Vice President of the NDH.
Throughout World War II, Sarajevo was fully incorporated into this fascist entity. All four mayors who served during that period were Muslims. As for Sarajevo’s Jewish population, those who were not deported to death camps were often forced to transfer ownership of their property to Muslims or to sell it for a fraction of its value in desperate attempts to secure permission to flee the occupied city.
None of this was mentioned by Baroness Helić in her opinion piece. She deliberately omitted the fact that, from the very outset of the war, Muslim militias operated as part of the Ustaša forces, carrying out killings and persecutions.
She also failed to acknowledge the existence of the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS “Handschar,” composed primarily of Bosnian Muslims, whose formation and recruitment were personally supported by Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, during World War II.
Baroness Helić also conveniently neglected to mention Mustafa Busuladžić—one of the founders of the pan-Islamist and pro-fascist organization Young Muslims, who, through his propaganda and antisemitic writings during the NDH period, contributed to the persecution of Sarajevo’s Serbs and Jews.
He was executed by the post-war communist authorities in 1945 for his wartime activities. Today, a street and an elementary school in Sarajevo bear the name of this pro-fascist Muslim ideologue.
This entire historical context was absent from Arminka Helić’s op-ed, which seemed designed to use historical revisionism to deflect any suspicion of contemporary antisemitism in Sarajevo. But, as is so often the case, falsehoods cannot remain hidden for long. Just over a month later, Sarajevo itself disproved the baroness’s claims.
That antisemitism thrives in Sarajevo became further evident when the city’s Muslim political and religious elite united in opposition to hosting the Conference of European Rabbis (CER) at the Swissôtel in Sarajevo.
Allegedly, their concern was that messages of support for Israel might be heard from the capital, a country they accuse of committing genocide in Gaza on a daily basis. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, President of the CER, responded with the following words: “Sarajevo has declared itself a ‘city of openness and tolerance,’ for everyone except Jews.”
Interestingly, the director of Swissôtel who withdrew hospitality to the CER is Jasmina Izetbegović—the daughter of Bakir Izetbegović, president of the SDA party, and granddaughter of Alija Izetbegović, the wartime Muslim leader who, during World War II, was himself a member of the pro-fascist Young Muslims organization founded by the aforementioned Mustafa Busuladžić.
The negative stance towards the Jewish people
The increasingly negative stance of political Sarajevo toward the Jewish people is, therefore, more than apparent. Since the outbreak of the conflict in Gaza, the compatriots of Baroness Helić in Bosnia and Herzegovina have taken a clear position against Israel, holding street protests in Sarajevo under Palestinian flags and symbols associated with Hamas.
In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel, we witnessed an attempt at indirect justification of this terrorist act by Željko Komšić, the Bosniak member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who simultaneously launched an attack on Israeli Ambassador Galit Peleg in response to her condemnation of his scandalous remarks.
It should not be forgotten that Sarajevo denied hosting a commemorative exhibition organized by the Embassy of Israel to mark the anniversary of the October 7 attacks. Republika Srpska immediately responded by ensuring that the planned commemoration took place at the National Theatre in East Sarajevo—once again demonstrating our solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters.
Sarajevo also refused to host the celebration of the 76th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel in 2024. As a result, the event was jointly organized in Banja Luka, the administrative centre of the Republic of Srpska.
Even the current conflict with Iran has not passed without reaction from Sarajevo’s Muslim leadership. On the very first day, the Grand Mufti of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Husein ef. Kavazović, publicly condemned what he called Israel’s "aggression" and military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This somewhat extended introduction was intended to give readers of The Jerusalem Post a clearer understanding of the background of Baroness Arminka Helić and her compatriots from Bosnia and Herzegovina, in order to better grasp the political context in which we find ourselves.
The manipulative nature of her op-ed lies in its attempt to distort the truth to construct a hybrid narrative of solidarity between Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Jewish people, only to use that narrative as a platform to spread falsehoods about Republika Srpska to the Israeli public.
Baroness Helić, for instance, claims in her article that Republika Srpska has passed legislation to reestablish the Serbian army, an outright falsehood. No such law has ever been adopted. She also exonerates the role of the illegitimate High Representative, Christian Schmidt, who, without a mandate from the UN Security Council, has caused the most serious political crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement through his neo-colonial impositions and unlawful interventions in the country’s legal and constitutional framework.
By placing all the blame for this crisis on Republika Srpska, Baroness Helić simultaneously diverts attention from the conspiratorial antisemitism that persists in Sarajevo, targeting the Serbian people while clearly revealing her own animosity.
Yet the recent incident involving the Conference of European Rabbis revealed precisely how Sarajevo’s media, the Islamic Community, and Muslim political leaders acted in unison against the leading body responsible for the religious life of Jews across Europe. We Serbs have endured the same forms of persecution, often at the hands of the same perpetrators, as our Jewish brothers and sisters.
That is why Republika Srpska promptly expressed solidarity with the representatives of the CER and invited the organizers to hold one of their future gatherings in Banja Luka, the administrative centre of Republika Srpska. Together, we can send a clear message that there is no place in Europe for hatred, antisemitism, or radicalism—and that, unlike Sarajevo, which evidently upholds a different set of values, Republika Srpska stands firmly for those that are truly European.
In the end, Baroness Arminka Helić had yet another underlying motive in publishing her opinion piece. Through the dissemination of anti-Serb propaganda, she sought to shape public opinion in support of potential future measures by the United Kingdom targeting Republika Srpska.
Namely, we have firmly opposed the UK’s proposal to turn Bosnia and Herzegovina into a holding centre for illegal migrants from Islamic countries who are being deported by the United Kingdom to the Balkans.
Republika Srpska cannot and will not accept individuals with criminal records, delinquents, or Islamist militants, many of whom would likely establish immediate connections with domestic radical Islamic circles, including former mujahideen fighters, Wahhabi cells, former ISIS combatants, and other extremist groups that still maintain a presence among segments of the Muslim population in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Such a scenario would pose serious security and existential threats to the Serbian people and to Republika Srpska as a whole.
Today, intelligence assessments regarding how many of these illegal migrants across the European Union and the United Kingdom are in fact former Islamist fighters from conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other war zones remain deliberately concealed.
The idea of deporting such individuals to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they could easily reconnect with radicalized domestic elements who have returned from Middle Eastern battlefields, is simply out of the question.
Because of our resolute position that Bosnia and Herzegovina will not accept illegal migrants from the United Kingdom for these very reasons, we expect an increase in political pressure, potential sanctions, hybrid operations, and a continued campaign of demonization targeting the Serbian people and Republika Srpska, one in which, regrettably, Baroness Helić plays an active role.
The author is the President of Republika Srpska.