In Sarajevo, the trial of Milorad Dodik, the leader of Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic, was postponed until Jan. 17 due to procedural issues raised by his legal team. Dodik was indicted in August for defying the rulings of an international peace envoy by signing laws that suspended rulings by the constitutional court and the peace envoy.
The trial was delayed for the second time after Dodik’s lawyers requested to move it to a court in the Serb Republic´s main city of Banja Luka citing political pressure on the state court in Sarajevo. The judge dismissed the request.
Dodik’s lawyers then requested that four prosecutors should be exempted over alleged biases, leaving nobody from the prosecutor’s team to read the indictment, which led to the adjournment of the trial until Jan. 17 by Judge Mirsad Strika.
In court, Dodik refused to take the stand and swore when asked to do so by Strika. He accused the prosecutors of bias and incompetence, stating that the trial would turn into the trial of the prosecutors and of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnian Serbs reject the jurisdiction of the central state court and prosecutors as it was set up by the peace envoy after Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, not by the Dayton peace treaty. Under the peace deal, Bosnia was split into two autonomous regions, the Serb Republic and a Federation dominated by Croats and Bosniaks, linked via a weak central government, which has caused dysfunction in the state.
Dodik has been working to separate his Serb-dominated region from Bosnia for a long time and intensified efforts over the past two years. He has also repeatedly denounced his political opponents and Western ambassadors to Bosnia, where around 100,000 people died in the war. The Serbs do not recognize German former government minister Christian Schmidt as the international High Representative in Bosnia, saying that he was not endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.
Schmidt amended Bosnia’s criminal code in July to provide for prosecutions of those seen as attacking Bosnian state institutions. Under the amendments, any official in Bosnia who fails to implement a decision of the High Representative or obstructs it in any way can be jailed for up to five years.
This story has been corrected to change the surname of the judge to Strika instead of Strik in paragraphs 6-7. (Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
