By Daria Sito-Sucic
SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik will find out on Wednesday whether he faces jail for allegedly defying decisions by an international official overseeing peace in the Balkan country.
Dodik, president of Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic, was indicted in 2023 for signing laws that suspended rulings by the constitutional court and by international peace envoy Christian Schmidt.
If found guilty, he faces six months to five years in jail.
Dodik, who has close ties with Russia, has rejected the indictment and warned that if the ruling goes against him the Serb Republic will block the work of the central government and withdraw from the state judiciary and joint armed forces.
Ultimately, he has said it could lead to the breakup of the divided country and the formation of a monetary union and confederation with neighbouring Serbia, the Bosnian Serbs’ long-time ally.
“The verdict could strike a death blow to Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Dodik said last week after the closing arguments at the court.
Dodik has been under U.S. and UK sanctions for obstructing peace accords in place since war in the 1990s, and has long advocated for the secession of his Serb-dominated region.
Bosnia’s 1992-95 war – part of a wider set of conflicts that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia – killed about 100,000 people. Under a U.S-backed deal in 1995, known as the Dayton Peace Agreement, Bosnia was split into two autonomous regions: the Serb-dominated Serb Republic and the Federation shared by Croats and Bosniaks, linked via a central government.
Denis Becirevic, the Bosniak member in Bosnia’s inter-ethnic presidency, said the announced actions were “threats to peace in Bosnia”.
In an address on state television on Tuesday, peace envoy Schmidt said that Bosnia’s fragile union would be protected.
“The Dayton order and state institutions remain protected and have to be respected. Bosnia and Herzegovina is not negotiable,” he said.
Many Serbs say Schmidt has no legal authority because his appointment was not endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.
Thousands of Dodik supporters travelled from across the region to attend a rally in the Serb Republic’s main city of Banja Luka on Tuesday evening.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Christina Fincher and Edward McAllister)
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