Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik signed laws banning the police and judiciary of the central government from exercising their powers in his Serb entity, which seems to have escalated a political crisis in the Balkan country.
Dodik said at a press conference the move restored constitutional jurisdiction to the Serb statelet of Republika Srpska, as the laws, along with others signed by Dodik, seems to pose a test for the central institutions in Bosnia.
Since the Dayton accords that put an end to the 1992-1995 civil war, which claimed nearly 100,000 lives, Bosnia has been divided between two largely autonomous entities, one Serb and one Muslim-Croat.
Dodik was sentenced last week to a year in prison and banned from holding office for six years for refusing to comply with decisions made by the envoy mandated to oversee the Dayton accords, Christian Schmidt.
Schmidt’s legitimacy is rejected by Bosnian Serbs, with the Republika Srpska’s Parliament adopting the law in response, with Dodik, left to appeal last week’s verdict, which he said was the result of a political trial intended to eliminate him from the political arena. The new laws target the state prosecutor’s office that indicted Dodik and the state court that sentenced him, as the third targeted institution is SIPA, the only national police force with a mandate to serve the central judiciary.
