A court in Bosnia has issued an international arrest warrant for Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik who is currently in Israel, accusing him of undermining the constitutional order and fleeing abroad in defiance, the court announced on March 27, said a Reuters report.
Dodik, the president of Bosnia’s Serb Republic region, triggered the gravest crisis since a 1990s war after being sentenced to a year in jail and banned from politics for six years for ignoring rulings by an international peace envoy.
Dodik, the pro-Russian long-time advocate of secession from Bosnia, had initiated legislation barring the state judiciary and police from operating in the Serb region, but Bosnia’s constitutional court temporarily suspended that.
The agreement signed in 1995 established two principal entities – the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina comprising Croats and Muslims, and the Republika Srpska comprising Bosnian Serbs – that make up the single state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Dodik and another top Republika Srpska official were accused of attacking the constitutional order after their move last month.
A court in Bosnia last week issued a domestic arrest warrant for Dodik and two other top officials of Republika Srpska. But Dodik and another official accused in the case defied the order and travelled abroad. Dodik crossed into neighbouring Serbia earlier this week and then travelled to Israel for an antisemitism conference in Jerusalem on Thursday.
“All of this suggests that both individuals could be abroad at any given moment, which provides grounds for action,” the court said in a statement on March 27, adding that the matter was now in the hands of global police agency Interpol.
