09/05/2025

The Agency for Education and Professional Training (AEPTM) has completed a five-day pilot training titled “Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism” for members of the Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Developed in cooperation with the Border Police and aligned with the NATO DEEP Counter-Terrorism Reference Curriculum, the training aimed to enhance officers' skills in line with NATO standards.

The training was delivered by AEPTM, NATO Headquarters Sarajevo, and NATO DEEP experts including Marcus Andreopoulos, Hannah Hains, Eve Register, Victoria Jones, Thomas Hader, Jack Roush, Lars Schmidt, Ivan Markov, Petar Marinov, William Liffick, and Niall McCormack. This initiative is part of NATO’s defense capacity-building program in BiH, which was extended in 2023 to include the Agency for Education and Professional Training.

Over the past two years, AEPTM has organized meetings between NATO experts and representatives of SIPA (State Investigation and Protection Agency), the Border Police, and the Directorate for Coordination of Police Bodies. Following an evaluation of the educational needs of these police agencies, NATO experts provided a detailed overview of the NATO reference curriculum for counter-terrorism (CTRC), on the basis of which three separate curricula were developed for SIPA, the Border Police, and the Directorate.

The pilot training concluded today is the second of this kind for Border Police officers. In September last year, as part of this project, a pilot training was held for SIPA investigators, while training for the Directorate for Coordination of Police Bodies will be organized in the middle of this year. This cooperation program between our agency and NATO also includes organizing workshops for instructors for each training module.

According to the new curriculum, the training focused on topics such as: domestic terrorist threats, financing of terrorism and the link between terrorism and crime, combating terrorism financing, biological threats, radiological and nuclear materials as emerging threats, the use of cyberspace, technology and convergent technologies for terrorist purposes, use of media for terrorist purposes, challenges related to foreign terrorist fighters and returnees, methods, tactics, techniques, procedures, and more.

The training certificates were presented by the Agency’s Director Marko Vujević, who thanked NATO for its support. The closing remarks on behalf of the NATO DEEP experts were delivered by Marcus Andreopoulos, who also thanked everyone involved in organizing the training, expressing his belief that it was a productive week for all participants.