BELGRADE, March 6. /TASS/. President Milorad Dodik of Republika Srpska (one of the two constituent entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina) has said that he rejected a summons to the prosecutor’s office of the Balkan country.
"The prosecutor’s office in Bosnia and Herzegovina invited me to testify tomorrow as a suspect in the destruction of the constitutional order, simply because I did my duty under the constitution and the law, guided by the decisions made by the People's Assembly of Republika Srpska. The prosecutor’s office in Bosnia and Herzegovina is an unconstitutional category and cannot talk about the constitution," Dodik wrote on the X social media platform.
"I will not go to their political court because the Serbs no longer go to the inquisition. The Serbs only hold talks on resolving the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina but exactly as it is written in the constitution and the Dayton Agreement," he added.
On February 26, a court in Bosnia and Herzegovina sentenced Dodik to one year in prison and imposed a six-year ban on his political activities for ignoring the decisions of High Representative of the International Community in the country Christian Schmidt. This ruling is a first-instance judgment and is subject to appeal. A final decision will be rendered by the second-instance chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the end of this year. Meanwhile, Dodik warned of his readiness to declare the sovereignty of Republika Srpska in the event of further attempts by Schmidt to lobby for laws violating the rights of Bosnian Serbs. In response to the court’s decision, a package of laws banning the operation of federal security agencies was adopted in Republika Srpska, which will come into effect on March 7.