Bosnia-Herzegovina's Constitutional Court has annulled an attempt by the country's Serb-dominated republic to prevent genocide denial from being punishable, keeping a year-old ban in place from the international community's overseer to the fractious Balkan country.
The court's judges on July 15 announced their decision to declare unconstitutional a law passed in the Republika Srpska entity that makes up half Bosnia alongside the Bosniak and Croat federation.
Outgoing international High Representative Valentin Inzko imposed a genocide-denial ban in July of last year, infuriating the Bosnian Serb member of the current three-man presidency, Milorad Dodik.
Inzko used his powers to criminalize the denial of internationally or Bosnian-recognized genocides, like the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb troops. He also outlawed hate speech and some public honors for convicted war criminals.
Dodik has continued to press for measures to establish competing authorities in Republika Srpska and further his declared aim of secession for the Serb-majority republic from the rest of Bosnia.
Bosnia is still governed under an ethnically based architecture set out by the 1995 Dayton Agreements that ended three years of intense war in the former Yugoslav republic marked by ethnic cleansing and brutality.
Inzko has since been replaced by German Christian Schmidt.
In July of last year, the National Assembly of Republika Srpska adopted a law on "non-implementation" of Inzko's decree inside the republic.
The massacre in Srebenica has been declared an act of genocide by two international courts.
But some Serbs and many in Republika Srpska's leadership continue to dispute that designation as well as other assignations of blame for atrocities during the Bosnian War.
Republika Srpska representatives have boycotted the work of state institutions since the Inzko decree on genocide denial.
Data from the Bosnian Prosecutor's Office shows that since the beginning of the ban, about 40 complaints have been filed against citizens and officials around the country.
Dodik is among the targets of those complaints.
So far, prosecutors say, no indictments have been filed.