BALKAN

DODIK CONVICTED: One year in prison and a six-year ban on holding political office!

by Serbian Times1. August 2025.1. August 2025.

The President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, was today legally sentenced to one year in prison and a six-year ban on holding political office, for disrespecting the decisions of the High Representative, Radio Free Europe learns.

The verdict was rendered by a three-member council composed of Amela Huskić, Vesna Jesenković, and Hilmo Vučinić, and the council confirmed the first-instance verdict of February 26, RSE states.

Dodik’s legal team, as well as the BiH Prosecutor’s Office, appealed the first-instance decision of the Court of BiH.

The prosecution requested an increase in the prison sentence, as well as the ban on holding office, and the defense requested the annulment of the verdict.

Dodik was found guilty of signing decrees on the promulgation of laws that the High Representative in BiH, Christian Schmidt, had previously annulled.

With these laws, the legislative bodies in the RS tried to prevent the implementation of the decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH and the High Representative on the territory of this entity.

The second defendant in the process, Miloš Lukić, acting director of the Official Gazette of the RS, who published the disputed laws, was acquitted of the charges in the first instance.

Shortly after the verdict in February, the National Assembly of the RS adopted a set of laws that abolish the jurisdiction of state judicial and police institutions on the territory of the RS, and the Court of BiH issued a central warrant for Dodik in mid-March, on suspicion of an attack on the constitutional order.

The warrant was issued for Radovan Višković and Nenad Stevandić, the prime minister of the RS and the president of the entity’s parliament, on the same suspicions.

Although the central warrant means that all police agencies in the country should arrest them and hand them over to the jurisdiction of state judicial authorities, this did not happen in the following months.

At the beginning of July, Dodik voluntarily came to the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH accompanied by his lawyer Goran Bubić, and his detention was lifted, and a measure of mandatory periodic reporting to the state authority was ordered.

A few days later, Višković and Stevandić also voluntarily appeared before the court, and their detention was also lifted.