PETRONIJEVIĆ: IF CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF BiH RULES ACCORDING TO CONSTITUTION, IT WILL OVERTURN DODIK'S CONVICTION

BELGRADE, NOVEMBER 3 /SRNA/ – If the Constitutional Court of BiH decides in accordance with the Constitution, it will annul the verdict of the Court of BiH against President Milorad Dodik, and the changed political circumstances give hope that this could happen, attorney Goran Petronijević told SRNA.

Apart from the altered political context, Petronijević said, the Constitutional Court of BiH could overturn the ruling because it would be a great embarrassment for such a verdict to reach the international level, namely, to come before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. He pointed out that the latest developments, in which there is no longer pressure coming from Washington, offer some hope that the Constitutional Court of BiH might try to act in accordance with the law and the Constitution. Petronijević argued that from the very beginning of the proceedings against Dodik, and with the very intention to amend the Criminal Code of BiH, an entire chain of decisions by various institutions was predetermined, starting from the prosecution, through the court, to the Constitutional Court, which is operating in an incomplete composition. All of this, he said, is not in accordance to the Dayton Agreement. Petronijević recalled that Christian Schmidt altered the BiH Criminal Code by inserting a provision aimed exclusively at Dodik, while the procedure violated a number of legal principles, including the temporal applicability of laws, that is, the retroactive enforcement of the new provision. "Such a decision should not even be considered by international courts such as the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, because that would expose everything that is happening in BiH," Petronijević said. He added that encouragement also comes from the changing tone in Washington, regarding the whole situation, where there are now almost open calls for Schmidt to cease applying the so-called Bonn powers. "That means even they have realized that Schmidt is illegitimate," Petronijević stated. He explained that a positive response by the Constitutional Court of BiH to Dodik's appeal would mean returning the case to the first-instance court, and if that does not happen, the defense will turn to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Petronijević assessed that the chances for the appeal to the Constitutional Court to yield certain results have increased, though he remains cautious in his expectations given the court's current composition and its questionable legitimacy, since it operates in an incomplete composition. The Constitutional Court of BiH has scheduled an extraordinary session for tomorrow, during which it is expected to make a ruling on the merits of President Dodik's appeal against the verdict of the Court of BiH, which sentenced him to one year in prison and six years of prohibition from political activity for "failure to comply with the decisions of Christian Schmidt".