Police shot dead a killer on Tuesday after an eight-day manhunt which saw more than a thousand officers comb the area south of Sarajevo, where Gacic is suspected to have killed his last victim - a police officer on duty.

Edin Gacic, 42, was Bosnia’s most wanted person since February 4, when the body of a grocery store owner in the village of Podorasac, south of Sarajevo, was found.

While the police were looking for Gacic, whom they suspected of having committed the crime, another murder occured on Saturday, this time of a police officer who was guarding a police training facility in Suhodol near the Sarajevo suburb of Tarcin. 

This prompted authorities to mobilize more than 1,000 officers who eventually found Gacic in the area of Lepenica, near the central town of Kiseljak.

The confrontation escalated to a shootout, resulting in Gacic’s death.

In 1998, Gacic, former member of the El mudjaheed unit of the Bosnia military, killed his fellow soldier Ismet Gunic, for which he was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 1999.

While on a weekend leave from prison, in August 2002, he shot and killed his mother in the Bosnian town of Zenica. The court subsequently handed down a cumulative sentence of 20 years in prison for Gacic.

He was released recently, having served two thirds of the sentence. Prior to the expiration of his sentence, Gacic was transferred to a prison in the city of Bihac in northern Bosnia.

The prison administration then wrote to several competent institutions, saying that Gacic was a high-risk convict, and likely to commit the same crimes after release. Although experts recommended that Gacic be instutionalised, authorities ignored their recommendation.

The Interior Minister of Bosnia’s Federation (FBiH) entity, Aljosa Campara, had told N1 on Monday that Gacic suffered from schizophrenia and possibly a dissociative identity disorder.

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