Bosnian Serb lawmakers on Thursday passed a set of laws barring central Bosnian judiciary and police from their entity in Bosnia, sending tensions soaring in the troubled Balkan country after a court convicted the pro-Russia Bosnian Serb president and banned him from politics.
The laws approved in the Bosnian Serb assembly on Thursday rejected the authority of the Bosnian prosecutors, the country's central court and its security agency in a blow to the fragile unity of the country Bosnia consists of the Serb-run and a Bosniak-Croat part tied together by joint state institutions.
Milorad Dodik, the president of the Serb-dominated half of Bosnia called Republika Srpska, was sentenced on Wednesday to a year in prison and was banned from engaging in politics for six years for disobeying orders from the top international official in Bosnia.
The separatist Bosnian Serb leader has described the conviction as an attack on all the Serb people in Bosnia and their mini-state formed after a 1992-95 war.
During the debate in the assembly, Dodik insisted that “this is not a secession” of Republika Srpska, but that the Serb mini-state was seeking to restore elements of autonomy envisaged in the Dayton peace accords and which he claimed had been taken away from the entity.
