Bosnia’s electoral commission said on Wednesday that Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska—the Serb-majority political entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina—had been formally stripped of his post after receiving a one-year jail sentence.
The Republika Srpska president was given the prison sentence and banned from public office for six years after being found guilty of flouting the rulings of the international envoy who monitors the peace accords that ended the country’s 1990 war.
The 66-year-old Dodik, who has headed the Republika Srpska since 2006, had condemned last Friday’s appeal court verdict as a “political” trial and a “blow” to the Serb entity “orchestrated by the European Union.”
In 2023, Dodik was prosecuted for passing two laws that banned the application of decisions by the international high representative and Bosnia’s federal constitutional court in the Serb entity.
The Bosnian Serb leader rejects the authority of the international representative, currently Christian Schmidt, who started in 2021. Dodik says the former German minister is “illegal” as his nomination has not been approved by the UN Security Council.
