Milorad Dodik, the president of the Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said on Wednesday that he was informed that INTERPOL had not accepted the request from the Bosnian court to issue international arrest warrants against him and Nenad Stevandić, the Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska.
Dodik wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that he had been notified by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, whom he thanked along with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
“President Aleksandar Vučić just called me to tell me that he received a notice from INTERPOL’s Directorate that Serbia’s complaint had been accepted and that INTERPOL had rejected the Bosnian court’s request to issue a red notice for Stevandić and me,” Dodik wrote on X.
The Bosnian Court had requested international arrest warrants on March 27 through INTERPOL for the two leaders of the Republic of Srpska.
The request for international arrest warrants came after they failed to respond to a summons from the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia, under suspicion that they had violated the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Dodik, the president of the Republic of Srpska, made this announcement on the same day he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
One day earlier, Serbia’s Acting Minister of Internal Affairs, Ivica Dačić, stated that Serbia’s involvement had prevented the enforcement of the arrest warrants for Dodik and Stevandić, according to REL.
Serbia had sent a protest note to INTERPOL regarding the arrest warrants for Dodik and Stevandić, arguing that they violated a clause in INTERPOL’s statute that prohibits actions with a political, military, religious, or racial background.
Dačić had previously stated that Dodik and Stevandić are Serbian citizens and that the international arrest warrants Bosnia referred to did not provide a valid basis for action, as they had not undergone the verification process to determine whether the conditions were met.
The Bosnian court had requested international arrest warrants after the two senior officials of the Republic of Srpska left Bosnia, avoiding the border control procedures when a national arrest warrant had been issued against them.
