SDP BiH Files Charges Against Dodik, Kosarac Over Mladic

Less than two days after Ratko Mladic died in the detention unit of the Hague tribunal, Sarajevo has produced the first concrete legal move directly targeting the political leadership of Republika Srpska, the entity whose top officials have for decades been among Belgrade’s key interlocutors in the Western Balkans. The Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SDP BiH) announced it will file criminal charges with the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik, Bosnian Foreign Minister Stasa Kosarac, RS National Assembly Speaker Nenad Stevandic and Banja Luka Mayor Drasko Stanivukovic, accusing them of publicly glorifying a convicted war criminal. In a region where political rhetoric about the 1990s war routinely spills over into relations with Serbia, this is the first test of how ready Bosnian institutions are to respond to the wave of statements triggered by Mladic’s death.

SDP BiH published the announcement on its official website overnight between August 27 and 28, saying the charges would be filed the very next day, August 28. According to the party, the legal basis is Article 145a, paragraph 3 of the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which establishes criminal liability for publicly approving, denying, grossly minimizing or attempting to justify genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes established by a final court verdict. Mladic was convicted by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals for genocide in Srebrenica and for crimes committed during the siege of Sarajevo, and spent roughly the last fifteen years in detention and prison in The Hague.

SDP BiH pushed out the same announcement to media that same night, at 8:48 p.m., which shows the party reacted within hours of the first public statements about Mladic’s death rather than waiting for the formal procedure the following day. The announcement made clear the four named officials would not be the last:

In the coming days, as we monitor public statements, we will also file criminal charges against other public officials who praise the criminal Ratko Mladic or who dispute, deny, justify or minimize the crimes for which he was convicted, including genocide.

The party also called on citizens to track public statements by public figures themselves, document them and file charges against anyone who glorifies a crime for which there is already a final conviction.

Reactions to Mladic’s death in Bosnia and Herzegovina were split even before SDP filed its first charge. Dragan Miokovic, a federal lawmaker and former police inspector, told media that evening, at 6:52 p.m.: “Ratko Mladic never lived to see freedom.” On the other side, the organization Remembering Srebrenica warned that public attention should not shift from the victims to the man convicted of killing them:

Today, a great deal of attention is focused on convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic following news of his death in prison. But today, as always, our focus must remain on his victims.

Srpske Novine previously reported on Mladic’s death in the article “Ratko Mladic Dies in The Hague at 84,” which laid out the basic facts of his final years and the convictions he served from his arrest in 2011 until his death in August 2026. SDP’s charges are the first legal follow-up to that story and show how quickly institutional response in Bosnia and Herzegovina is tracking the political fallout, just days after the death of a man whose name has for decades symbolized the divide between Sarajevo and Banja Luka.

For Belgrade, the development is sensitive because Milorad Dodik has for years been one of Serbian politics’ most important interlocutors in the region, and any criminal charge against him in Sarajevo is inevitably read as part of the broader dispute over the status of Republika Srpska and its relationship with Bosnia and Herzegovina’s state institutions. Whether the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina will formally take up the charges against Dodik, Kosarac, Stevandic and Stanivukovic at all, and whether the list of names grows in the coming days as SDP has promised, remains an open question that will occupy the public in Bosnia and the region in the weeks ahead.