A Bosnia appeals court said on Friday that it had upheld a prison sentence handed to Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik.

A Sarajevo court in February sentenced the president of Republika Srpska (RS) – the ethnic Serb part of Bosnia – to a year in prison and banned him from holding office for six years, for not complying with rulings by the international envoy overseeing Bosnia's 1995 peace accords.

Bosnia's appeals court said in a statement that it had upheld the lower court ruling, adding that "no appeal is allowed".

Earlier this year, Bosnia's top court annulled several secessionist laws passed by the country's Serb statelet, which provoked a political crisis in the Balkan nation.

The parliament of Republika Srpska (RS), one of two entities making up Bosnia since its 1990s war, had passed the laws in February after a Sarajevo court convicted Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik for failing to comply with decisions of the international envoy who oversees the peace deal that ended the war.

Dodik was sentenced to one year in prison and banned from holding political office for six years. Dodik and the prosecutors have appealed.

But Dodik initiated the laws, which include a ban on Bosnia's central police and judiciary from operating in the Serb entity.

Bosnia's central government has been strengthened over the years to the detriment of the semi-autonomous powers in Republika Srpska and the Muslim Bosniak-Croat federation, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH).