The landmark ruling by the court in Sarajevo comes after a yearlong trial against the president of Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic.
A Bosnian court has sentenced Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik to one year in prison for defying the rulings of the international peace official overseeing peace in the Balkan country.
On Wednesday, the court in Sarajevo also handed the 65-year-old from Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic a six-year ban from office.
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.
The Bosnian Serb leader rejected the indictment as politically motivated.
“There is no reason to worry. I learned to put up with more difficult things,” Dodik told supporters in Banja Luka.
“We must be cheerful, I am sentenced to one year for their crap and their jail,” he also said.
Under criminal law, Bosnians can pay a fine instead of facing jail time if the sentence is no more than one year.
Dodik has two weeks to appeal the ruling. It was not clear if he would appeal.
The leader and his lawyers were not in the court during the sentencing.
In response, Dodik also stated that the Bosnian Serb parliament will ban the work of the state prosecutor, the state court, and the intelligence agency in the Serb Republic area of Bosnia.
Before the ruling, Dodik had said that he would disobey any conviction and threatened “radical measures” in response, including the eventual secession of the Serb-run entity in Bosnia called Republika Srpska from the rest of the country.
Dodik had said a ruling against him could “strike a death blow to Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
The court acquitted a second defendant, Milos Lucic, the former acting director of the Serb entity’s Official Gazette. He had also been accused of deliberately obstructing the enforcement of decisions made by Schmidt.
The first-instance verdict could still be amended. Dragan Bursac, a columnist and political analyst for Al Jazeera Balkans, said it remains to be seen whether he “can buy out his sentence, if it’s possible, and whether he’ll be freed or if a compromise will be reached.”
“The real concern is whether he’ll be able to hold other political positions within Bosnia and Herzegovina or not, the part of sentence which hurts him the most,” Bursac said.
“In a month’s time, we’ll know the second-instance verdict, but I don’t believe the judicial system will stray much, and I don’t expect significant changes in the appellate process. These are likely the final details of Dodik’s sentence.”
The case has been widely seen as a potential test of the Balkan nation’s weak central government after Dodik flouted the country’s peace deal and court system.
