At the hearing of the President of the Republika Srpska (RS)Milorad Dodik and the acting director of the “Official Gazette of the RS” Milos Lukic, at the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina(BiH), the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH presented its evidence, which had the intention that, instead of police inspector Sinisa Soldat, two inspectors of the Agency for Investigation and Protection, Petar Djukic and Nikola Djukic, are present for hearing yesterday, but the defense objected.
Since the defense objected to the hearing of these two witnesses, their hearing was postponed until the next hearing, which will be held on November 13th.
These two witnesses were returned from yesterday’s hearing.
The Prosecutor’s Office of BiH submitted material evidence that was correspondence with the Office of the High Representative (OHR), to which the defense had objections, pointing out that the OHR is not a signatory to the Dayton Agreement, and that facts related to the Constitution of BiH cannot be requested from the OHR.
The defense, as well as Dodik himself, expressed objections to the language and requested that the documents be submitted in Cyrillic script.
Prosecutor Nedim Cosic said that inspector of State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) Sinisa Soldat was hospitalized and could not attend the trial, and that instead of him, Petar and Nikola Djukic were called as witnesses.
He stated that these two SIPA inspectors will be questioned on the same circumstances as Soldat.
Dodik’s defense attorney, Goran Bubic, asked whether the Court had been provided with documentation about Soldat’s inability to attend the hearing, and pointed out that they have a principled objection to these two witnesses, which concerns the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, according to which police agencies in this case are at the BiH level, part of the investigation.
“It turns out that the Prosecution is interrogating only itself because SIPA is part of the investigative team,” said Bubic.
Lawyer Miljkan Pucar pointed out that no material evidence was submitted about Soldat’s state of health and that it would be correct to submit evidence to the Court and the lawyers about whether he is really sick.
Pucar pointed out that this is illegal, because both the evidence proposed by the Prosecutor’s Office and the hearing of Inspector of SIPA, who is part of the investigative team, are also illegal.
The prosecutor stated that they contacted the proposed witness Soldat, but that he was not at work, and that due to the short amount of time they were not able to obtain documentation about his health condition, they found out by phone.
Judge Sena Uzunovic said that the Court obliges the Prosecutor’s Office to submit witness documentation and asked whether the two proposed SIPA inspectors were signatories to the evidence, to which the prosecutor answered in the affirmative.
It was established that it was justified to interrogate these two witnesses, to which the defense lawyers reacted, emphasizing that they were not ready to interrogate the two witnesses because they did not know and expected that they would be called for an interrogation yesterday.
That is why the Court of BiH decided to postpone their hearing until the next hearing on November 13th.
After that, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH submitted material evidence that mainly related to correspondence with the OHR.
Dodik also requested that the materials be delivered to him in Cyrillic, so that even from that side, the legal certainty and authenticity of the translations, as well as their content, can be doubted.
“You can see the manipulation of the Prosecutor’s Office, which demanded that certain documents be delivered to it from the OHR. We must have a signed document and all translations must be in Cyrillic, that is my constitutional right to ask, because I do not understand another language,” said Dodik.
Dodik’s request that the materials be delivered to him in Cyrillic was accepted.
The next hearing will be held on November 13th at 1:00 p.m.
Uzunovic proposed that, apart from that date, hearings be held on November 20th and 27th, to which Bubic objected, stating that he has a hearing in another case on November 27th, so it remained unclear whether there would be hearings on that date.
Dodik and Lukic are accused of being in Banja Luka from July 1st to 9th, 2023 – aware and knowing that High Representative Christian Schmidt made a decision preventing the entry into force of the Law on Non-Enforcement of Decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH from July 1st of the same year, as well as the decision preventing the entry into force of the Law on Amendments to the Law on the Publication of Laws and other regulations of the RS – took actions with the aim of continuing the legislative procedure, not applying and not implementing the decisions of the High Representative.
