SARAJEVO: Bosnian authorities have issued an arrest warrant for ethnic Serb leader Milorad Dodik, a senior police officer said Wednesday, as part of an investigation into his alleged flouting of the country’s constitution.
The announcement comes a week after police said they were seeking to question Dodik, who remained defiant and called on federal police to ignore the order.
But according to the head of police in Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat statelet, an arrest warrant has now been issued by authorities.
It also includes orders to detain Republika Srpska Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic and Parliamentary Speaker Nenad Stevandic.
“We received an arrest warrant for these three individuals,” said Vahidin Munjic during an interview with local media.
“All police organs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, if they spot these individuals, are obligated to arrest them and hand them over to the state court.”
Tensions have soared in the divided Balkan country since Dodik was convicted last month for defying Christian Schmidt, the international envoy charged with overseeing the peace accords that ended Bosnia’s 1990s war.
Dodik, who is the president of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska (RS) statelet, remains unrepentant. He helped push through laws forbidding the federal police and judiciary from entering Bosnia’s Serb entity in retaliation.
The laws were later struck down by the constitutional court.
Since the end of Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war in the 1990s, the country has consisted of two autonomous halves — the Serb-dominated RS and a Muslim-Croat region.
The two entities have their own governments and parliaments and are linked by weak central institutions.
During a meeting in the RS capital on Wednesday, Dodik appeared to pay little attention to the latest news concerning the warrant.
“We will continue to implement the policies adopted by the parliament,” he said, referring to the RS’s legislator.
Bosnia’s divided politics and fragile, post-war institutions have faced increasing uncertainty due to the unfolding political crisis.
On Tuesday, the head of Bosnia’s federal police force Darko Culum — an ally of Dodik — announced that he was resigning from the post and would return to work for the interior ministry in the RS.
Days earlier, Dodik had called on ethnic Serbs working for Bosnia’s national institutions to quit and take up jobs in the RS.
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic — a major backer of Dodik — also said he planned to raise the issue of the arrest warrant during a visit to Brussels this week.
“We could end up in a total disaster overnight. That’s why we must do everything to preserve peace and stability,” Vucic said during an interview with a Serbian broadcaster.
For years, Dodik has pursued a separatist agenda, repeatedly threatening to pull the Serb statelet out of Bosnia’s central institutions — including its army, judiciary and tax system — which has led to sanctions from the United States.
The RS leader had already pushed through two earlier laws that refused to recognize decisions made by Schmidt and Bosnia’s constitutional court.
That led to his conviction last month, when he was sentenced to a year in prison and handed a six-year ban from office.
Bosnia issues arrest warrant for ethnic Serb leader
https://arab.news/6c4zq
Bosnia issues arrest warrant for ethnic Serb leader
- The announcement comes a week after police said they were seeking to question Dodik
- According to the head of police in Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat statelet, an arrest warrant has now been issued by authorities
Australian bushfires raze homes, cut power to tens of thousands
- PM Anthony Albanese said the nation faced a day of “extreme and dangerous” fire weather, especially in Victoria, where much of the state has been declared a disaster zone
SYDNEY: Thousands of firefighters battled bushfires in Australia’s southeast on Saturday that have razed homes, cut power to thousands of homes and burned swathes of bushland. The blazes have torn through more than 300,000 hectares (741,316 acres) of bushland amid a heatwave in Victoria state since the middle of the week, authorities said on Saturday, and 10 major fires were still burning statewide. In neighboring New South Wales state, several fires close to the Victorian border were burning at emergency level, the highest danger rating, the Rural Fire Service said, as temperatures hit the mid-40s Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit). More than 130 structures, including homes, have been destroyed and around 38,000 homes and businesses were without power due to the fires in Victoria, authorities said. The fires were the worst to hit the state since the Black Summer blazes of 2019-2020 that destroyed an area the size of Turkiye and killed 33 people. “Where we can fires will be being brought under control,” Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan told reporters, adding thousands of firefighters were in the field.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the nation faced a day of “extreme and dangerous” fire weather, especially in Victoria, where much of the state has been declared a disaster zone.
“My thoughts are with Australians in these regional communities at this very difficult time,” Albanese said in televised remarks from Canberra. One of the largest fires, near the town of Longwood, about 112 km (70 miles) north of Melbourne, has burned 130,000 hectares (320,000 acres) of bushland, destroying 30 structures, vineyards and agricultural land, authorities said. Dozens of communities near the fires have been evacuated and many of the state’s parks and campgrounds were closed. A heatwave warning on Saturday was in place for large parts of Victoria, while a fire weather warning was active for large areas of the country including New South Wales, the nation’s weather forecaster said. In New South Wales capital Sydney, the temperature climbed to 42.2 C, more than 17 degrees above the average maximum for January, according to data from the nation’s weather forecaster.
It predicted conditions to ease over the weekend as a southerly change brought milder temperatures to the state.
