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Bosniak presidency member Bakir Izetbegovic. Photo: bakirizetbegovic.ba

A Bosnian Serb political party, the National Democratic Movement, NDP, said on Monday that it will file a criminal lawsuit against the Bosniak member of the country’s presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, for circumventing state institutions to file a request for the revision of Bosnia’s genocide lawsuit against Serbia at eth International Court of Justice.

The International Court of Justice last Thursday rejected the request to re-examine the judgment that cleared Serbia of responsibility for genocide, saying that “no decision has been taken by the competent authorities, on behalf of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state” to ask for the review.

The NDP complaint also targets Sakib Softic, Bosnia’s legal counsel in the original case, who submitted the request for the revision on February 23.

NDP president Dragan Cavic said his party accuses Izetbegovic and Softic of “false impersonation, incitement to false impersonation, and usurpation of constitutional powers”.

The Bosnian state prosecutor’s office also said on Friday that it will open a case to probe allegations about the role of Softic as the country’s legal representative in the submission of the request for a revision of the ICJ judgment.

The prosecution did not say whether the role of Izetbegovic will also be probed.

The initiative to revisit the 2007 judgment came from Izetbegovic, but he failed to win support from either the Croat or Serb members of the three-member state presidency.

Last month, the ICJ wrote to each of the presidency members to ask them to clarify whether Softic was the legitimate representative of the country – which Serb presidency member Mladen Ivanic had disputed in letters to the ICJ.

Media reports quoted NDP vice-president Momcilo Novakovic as saying that his party would submit its complaint on Monday, “especially now that it has surfaced that it was known before that Sakib Softic had no legitimacy” for his actions.

In May 2016, the ICJ had notified Softic that it did not consider him an authorised agent for the state of Bosnia.

A number of politicians have criticised Izetbegovic and Softic since this revelation surfaced in the media, saying they hid this fact from the people.

Softic, however, told news portal Klix that the letter from May 2016 contained only the opinion of one registrar of the court, not the opinion of the ICJ as an institution.

The ICJ judgment in 2007 exonerated Serbia of responsibility for the genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in the 1992-95 war but found it partly responsible for not stopping it.