A court in Bosnia and Herzegovina has accepted a motion by the prosecution to withdraw the arrest warrant for Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, DPA and local media reported, quoted by BTA.
The Sarajevo court ruled yesterday that there were no longer grounds for executing the arrest warrant and Dodik, who is president of Republika Srpska, the semi-autonomous part of Bosnia and Herzegovina populated mainly by Bosnian Serbs, has been released on parole.
Dodik appeared at the Bosnian prosecutor's office, accompanied by his lawyer, and agreed to be questioned there before heading to the court, where the prosecution presented its motion to withdraw the warrant for arrest.
Dodik was wanted for involvement in anti-constitutional activities aimed at undermining the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The court issued the arrest warrant in March after Dodik failed to respond to a summons from the prosecutor's office. According to media reports, his appearance before authorities yesterday was conditional on guarantees that he would not be arrested.
Dodik later told Republika Srpska television RTRS that the conditions were that he report to the police in Laktasi, where his registered address in Republika Srpska is, every two weeks. He told the television station that he did not feel like a winner, but was simply fed up with this situation.
In another case in February, Dodik was sentenced to one year in prison and a six-year ban from holding public office for failing to comply with the decisions of the international community's high representative, Christian Schmidt, who oversees compliance with the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the war in Bosnia in 1995. Dodik's lawyers have appealed and the case is still ongoing.
Dodik, who maintains close relations with Moscow, has for years pushed for the separation of Republika Srpska from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Under the terms of the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the interethnic war in Bosnia (1992-1995), the country is divided into two semi-autonomous parts - Republika Srpska, populated mainly by Bosnian Serbs, and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (a Muslim-Croat federation), home to Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and Bosnian Croats. Each part has its own government, parliament, and police, but the two semi-autonomies are linked by common state-level institutions, including a judiciary, army, security services, and tax administration.