The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina today confirmed the indictment against the President of the RS Milorad Dodik and acting Director of the Official Gazette of the RS, Miloš Lukić.
This means that the SNSD leader has now been officially charged and that a court case will be conducted against him, as well as against Lukić.
Dodik’s lawyers also tried to replace the judge who will decide on the indictment, but they did not succeed, considering that the judicial panel of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina unanimously rejected that request.
Because of the indictment against Dodik, the ruling regime also organized protests with the aim of presenting the case as an attack on the Republika Srpska entity and the Serbian people in BiH, when in fact it is a case against two people who potentially broke the law.
At the beginning of August, the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina filed an indictment against Dodik, but instead of confirming it, the state court decided to return the indictment to them for revision because the prosecution did not specify which criminal offense was committed and what the cause-and-effect relationship between what Dodik is accused of and what he is accused of Lukic.
The Prosecutor’s Office previously said that they filed the indictment for the criminal offense of failure to implement the decision of the High Representative from Article 203 and paragraph 1 of the BiH Criminal Code, which was recently amended by High Representative Christian Schmidt precisely so that his decisions would be respected in the RS.
This criminal offense is punishable by half a year to five years in prison, however, after the addition of the indictment, they did not announce publicly to explain what changes had been made.
Many criticized them for not bringing an indictment because of an attack on the constitutional order, because in that case he could have received a higher sentence, but others point out that it is a complicated criminal offense to prove.
The filing of the indictment is the result of an attempt by the RS authorities to block the implementation of the judgments of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina by passing a special law in the entity parliament in June. That law, which was passed by the National Assembly of the RS on June 27, was annulled by Schmidt a few days later using his powers. However, the decree was published in the Official Gazette, and Dodik could not find a director who would do it for a long time until Lukić appeared, Klix.ba reports.