Dodik case opens season of bargaining in judiciary: Who else wants to surrender but without arrest and detention?

Written by: Amra Vrabac

The case of Milorad Dodik marks the beginning of a new practice by the BiH Prosecutor's Office and the BiH Court. If you are a suspect or accused, with the help of lawyers and influential friends in the judiciary, you can bargain with the judiciary. You can choose when and whether to respond to a summons from the BiH Prosecutor's Office, you can set conditions for when you want to come. In some cases, the Court will receive you even in the late afternoon hours, at hearings that are “public,” but actually are not because the public is unaware of them.

Much could be held against the state judiciary in recent years, into which millions of marks have been pumped from both the state budget and foreign donations, but that this same judiciary would fall at the feet of Milorad Dodik is a point of no return.

On Friday, Milorad Dodik walked into the BiH Court as a suspect for attacking the constitutional order with a certain detention order, and walked out as a free man with the sole measure of “periodic reporting to the Laktaši police station.” It is already clear that nothing will come of the case of attacking the constitutional order. It will turn out that the case was resolved by the BiH Constitutional Court because it struck down the unconstitutional laws passed by the RS National Assembly. However, that burden now falls on prosecutor Vedrana Mijović, who was tasked with bringing the “Dodik case” to a close as quietly as possible. And the Court certainly accepts the Prosecutor's Office's proposals. At least in this case. It remains to apply the same principle to other suspects for attacking the constitutional order, among them Nenad Stevandić, Radovan Višković, possibly also some ministers in the RS Government, the director of the RS Official Gazette, but the BiH Prosecutor's Office has never confirmed how many people are suspected of attacking the constitutional order.

For four months, BiH has been living in a parallel reality, one created by the RS authorities and another in which BiH citizens actually live, full of uncertainty, fear, and constant waiting for the judiciary to prosecute those who attacked it.

However, that other reality disappeared on Friday. The bargaining with Milorad Dodik succeeded.

Thus, it is expected that as early as Monday, the BiH Prosecutor's Office will be flooded with requests from lawyers to apply the same principle to their clients, suspects or accused. There have been earlier cases where some “heroes of the month” signed plea agreements and then negotiated one-year prison sentences for serious crimes, which they bought off, and today those defendants are free people.

On Tuesday, July 8, it will be one year since Zoran Galić, then deputy director of SIPA, whom the BiH Prosecutor's Office suspects of abuse of office and accepting bribes while he was director of the BiH Border Police, fled BiH illegally. The prosecutor in that case is Bojana Jolović. Although she had several cases related to Zoran Galić for years, the BiH Prosecutor's Office did not act on those reports. Three different prosecutors handled six cases in which Zoran Galić was involved for multiple criminal offenses. After he fled BiH, Chief State Prosecutor Milanko Kajganić insinuated that Galić had been tipped off about the operation, pointing a finger of suspicion at SIPA. However, even a year later, the BiH Prosecutor's Office has not revealed how the operation to arrest Galić failed.

After the handling of the Dodik case, Galić hopes that the BiH Prosecutor's Office might treat him similarly. However, unlike Dodik, regardless of what anyone thinks about it, he legally left the country and returned, informing the public about it, and did not hide despite an internal arrest warrant, while Galić is a fugitive from BiH justice. However, given the HDZ's political support for Galić, with such a judiciary, it is not excluded that the fugitive might be accommodated.

And as my colleague Avdo Avdić, who first announced Dodik's appearance before the Court, said, when the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina promised not to detain him, Milorad Dodik responded to the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And from the hearing itself, it was evident that everything had already been arranged. The roles were well divided, though not perfectly played, but the plan succeeded.

The consequences of this bargaining will be felt most by the citizens of BiH. Because the judiciary has long shown that it does not respect even the laws according to which it should file indictments and judge.

Milorad Dodik should have been indicted and prosecuted by now for constantly denying the Srebrenica genocide, glorifying war criminals, and inciting national and religious hatred.

Although Dodik is being tried for disobeying the High Representative's decisions, the second-instance verdict of the Appellate Chamber, expected soon, could fully illuminate the judiciary in BiH. At this moment, it is almost certain that Dodik will not spend a single day in prison, while an agreement on a ban on political activity has not yet been reached. And even if he is banned from political activity, Dodik will manage processes from the shadows.

Regardless of how pointless the judicial process against Dodik under the imposed amendment to the BiH Criminal Law was and how much it looked like Christian Schmidt's showdown with Dodik, the judiciary has shown that it turns whichever way the wind blows.

Now it is time for the names and surnames of judges and prosecutors, their biographies that mysteriously disappeared when Dodik threatened to list them all, to return to the pages of the BiH Court and Prosecutor's Office. Whether he listed them or wrote them off, it makes no difference.

Whatever the verdict for Dodik, it will not solve the problems in BiH, but it will show that he is one of the most important people in BiH and that he directly controls processes in BiH. With or without helpers, but he controls them.

The greatest damage from this bargaining will be suffered by the citizens, on whom the judiciary will continue to prove its “independence,” but only up to the point where it does not encroach on the interests of various Dodiks.