SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s prosecutors said on Thursday that Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik was being investigated for attacking the country’s constitutional order, the day after he signed laws banning the state judiciary and police from its autonomous Serb region.
A state court last week sentenced Dodik, the Serb Republic’s president, to a year in prison and banned him from politics for six years for suspending rulings by the constitutional court and international envoy Christian Schmidt, who oversees implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace treaty.
Dodik rejected the verdict and next day the Serb regional parliament passed legislation barring the national police and judiciary from its territory. Dodik, a pro-Russian nationalist, signed the separatist laws on Wednesday evening.
The prosecutors’ office said in a statement it has been conducting investigations into what it described as the criminal act of an attack on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitutional order since December.
Dodik’s moves are triggering a crisis in the Balkan country, which after a 1992-95 war was divided into two autonomous regions, the Serb-dominated Serb Republic and a federation shared by Croats and Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks. They are linked by a weak federal government.
Dodik, who is supported by Russia, Hungary and Serbia, confirmed on his X profile that he had received an invitation to give a statement at the prosecutors’ office on Friday. He said he would not go to the “political court”.
He maintains that the state judiciary, prosecutors and police are not constitutional because they were not envisaged in the Dayton peace accords that ended the war in which 100,000 were killed.
On Thursday, Denis Becirovic, the Bosniak member of the country’s tripartite presidency, and two other officials filed an appeal to the constitutional court against the Serb parliament legislation they say violates the peace accords and the constitution.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Alex Richardson)
