Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik was sentenced to one year in prison on Wednesday and ordered to step down from his role as president of the country's Serb-dominated region for six years for defying orders of an international peace envoy.

Bosnian Serb lawmakers on Thursday passed a set of laws barring central Bosnian judiciary and police from the Serb-run entity in Bosnia, sending tensions soaring in the troubled Balkan country after a court convicted its pro-Russia president and banned him from politics.

The Bosnian Serb leader, who heads one of two regions created to end the 1992-5 war that killed more than 100,000 people in multi-ethnic Bosnia, responded to his sentencing by ord