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Dodik, who serves as the president of the Western Balkan country’s Serb-majority entity of the RS, has the right to appeal Wednesday’s verdict.
ADVERTISEMENTBosnia’s state-level court reached a first-degree verdict Wednesday against Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, sentencing him to one year in prison and barring him from politics for six years in a high-profile case that has sparked renewed tensions in the Western Balkan country and EU membership hopeful.The Sarajevo-based Court of BiH judges found Dodik, who serves as the president of the Serb-majority entity of the Republika Srpska (RS), guilty of criminal conduct over his defiance of the decisions of the international peace envoy in the country, German diplomat Christian Schmidt. In 2023, Dodik pushed through two laws adopted by the RS National Assembly — the entity’s parliament — related to preventing the implementation of state-level Constitutional Court rulings and further amends to the entity’s legislation.Both of the laws were immediately blocked by Schmidt, who serves as the head of the international community’s Office of the High Representative (OHR). In Bosnia, the High Representative acts as the chief arbiter in high-profile disputes and the key figure overseeing the implementation of the Dayton Agreement, signed in 1995 to stop the war in the country.The agreement brought about the end of the war between the country’s three main ethnic groups — Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats — that began in 1992 during the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, deemed as the bloodiest conflict on European soil since World War II.The peace deal, which also acts as the country’s constitution, split the country into two main administrative units, or entities: the Serb-majority RS, comprising about half of Bosnia, and the Bosniak-Croat Federation of BiH (FBiH), partially overseen by an umbrella state-level government.Meant to appease the former belligerents, it created a complicated system of checks and balances, said to be the world’s most complex democracy.’Give him the boot’In immediate response to the sentencing, Dodik said to a crowd gathered in his support in the regional capital of Banja Luka that the National Assembly will issue a slew of decisions prohibiting the work of the state-level court, prosecutor’s office and security and intelligence agencies on the entity’s territory.Prior to the verdict, he also said he would ask for other Serb officials in state-level institutions to boycott them, a move which could paralyse the decision-making processes in the country.In Banja Luka, Dodik once again slammed the High Representative — whose legitimacy he keeps questioning.”When you see Schmidt, tell the police so we can arrest him and give him the boot here,” Dodik said on Wednesday. “He committed the (first act of) violence, and I have the right to defend myself,” he added.”I need the people’s support, and I’ll pursue this to the end,” Dodik stated. He has the right to appeal Wednesday’s verdict.In neighbouring Serbia, President Aleksandar Vučić reacted to the sentencing by calling a national security council meeting and announcing he would travel to Banja Luka on Wednesday evening.Andrej Plenković, the prime minister of another Bosnian neighbour, Croatia — an EU and NATO member state — said that “the ball should be brought to the ground” as the sentencing is not final.ADVERTISEMENT”Today you have protests, then speeches, then a few political reactions that are more exuberant than usual,” Plenković told the press on Wednesday.”However, I believe that … political and legal solutions must be found to make a functional Bosnia in which all three peoples are equal, and in which the political responsibility for the country’s functioning is taken by the institutions and parties that have won that trust in elections,” he concluded.Dodik, who has been calling for the separation of the Serb entity from the rest of Bosnia for over a decade, has faced British and US sanctions for his policies but has had Russia’s support.Prior to the sentencing, the state-level Prosecutor Nedim Ćosić requested that the court convict Dodik to serve up to five years in prison and ban him from political activity for 10 years. His defence asked for all charges to be dropped.ADVERTISEMENT
