Additions to the indictment of all indictments, as announced, which was brought against the suspects Milorad Dodik and Milos Lukic, the acting director of the Official Gazette of the Republika Srpska (RS) caused enormous public interest.
Although it is known what crime Dodik and Lukic committed, in the indictment, as explained in its return for revision, there was no factual description of how Dodik signed and Lukicpublished decrees on non-publication of the decisions of the high representative in the entity’s official gazette.
Accidental or intentional failure of the acting prosecutor to return the previous indictment for revision? In practice, a flawed indictment is not uncommon, but in this politically sensitive case – symptomatic.
“The act of the criminal offense was described for each of the suspects, but what was described as a criminal offense was not connected with the alleged perpetrators of the criminal offense, i.e. with those whom the prosecutor’s office suspects of having committed a criminal offense and caused certain consequences prohibited by law with that offense. That is the essence,” told Asim Crnalic, lawyer.
“We can interpret that all this is some kind of further manipulation of the process itself, dragging out the process itself and preparing for the case to ultimately fail,” believes Ivana Korajlic, executive director of Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH).
There was no response from the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) about the omissions in the case that was supposed to show that the judiciary still functions.
“In my opinion, the chief prosecutor is responsible. If he doesn’t have time because he deals with administrative matters, he has deputies who are experts and who should help,” Crnalic is categorical.
“He leads the investigation, who gave away information, so it’s not a secret, it’s not a junta that cannot be known, so the one who hides behind the secret has no place in the prosecutor’s office because the case against Dodik is not strictly confidential, and that’s why I think detention for Dodik should have been proposed because he broke up the investigation through his people in the BiH Prosecutor’s Office,“ explained Dusko Tomic, a lawyer.
