Irish police chief moves to Bosnia

An Irishman was named head of the European Union’s police mission to Bosnia, which supervises the work of local police, the mission said.

Bartholomew Kevin Carty was selected by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and appointed by the Council of the European Union, said Lena Andersson, spokeswoman for the police mission in Sarajevo.

He replaces the late Danish diplomat Sven Christian Frederiksen, who died of a heart attack last month.

Carty was previously in charge of police in the Dublin metropolitan region. He also served as special adviser to the independent panel on the safety and security of UN personnel in Iraq.

The EU’s police mission took over the task of supervising Bosnia’s police from the United Nations at the beginning of last year.

The aim of the mission – defined in Bosnia’s peace agreement, which stopped the 1992-95 war here – is to create a Western-style professional police force in the post-war country.