SMAJIĆ v. BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA DECISION 11 35. The Court should determine whether the interference was proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued and whether the reasons adduced by the national authorities to justify it were relevant and sufficient. In doing so, it has to satisfy itself that these authorities applied standards which were in conformity with the principles embodied in Article 10 and relied on an acceptable assessment of the relevant facts. (see Perinçek, cited above, § 196 (iii)). 36. Turning to the present case, the Court notes that the applicant wrote a number of posts on a publicly accessible Internet forum in which he described military action to be undertaken against Serb villages and neighbourhoods in the BD region in the event of war caused by the Republika Srpska’s secession. In the domestic courts’ view those posts contained the constituent elements of the offence of inciting to national, racial and religious hatred, discord or intolerance (see paragraphs 5, 6 and 9 above). 37. The Appellate Court accepted that the posts were written in a hypothetical form (that is to say in respect of a war scenario that had little possibility of realisation). However, taking into account the content of the posts, it concluded that they could not be considered to constitute the expression of free thought on topical matters of general interest, but rather a highly inappropriate form of dialogue advocating a strategy of behaviour towards one of the ethnic groups in BD. Furthermore, it held that the applicant had used expressions which were highly insulting to members of an ethnic group (see paragraph 9 above). The Constitutional Court, which – as already stated above in relation to Article 6 (see paragraph 27 above) – had jurisdiction to quash the lower courts’ decisions and remit the case for retrial – endorsed this reasoning as relevant and sufficient (see paragraph 12 above). 38. In this respect, the Court reiterates that the domestic authorities are better placed to examine and interpret the facts and to apply the national legislation (see, mutatis mutandis, Dilek Aslan v. Turkey, no. 34364/08, § 76, 20 October 2015). 39. The Court notes that the subject of the applicant’s posts, even if written in a hypothetical form, had touched upon the very sensitive matter of the ethnic relations in post-conflict Bosnian society. Furthermore, the domestic courts examined the case with care and in conformity with the principles embodied in Article 10 and gave relevant and sufficient reasons for the applicant’s conviction. 40. Finally, the Court reiterates that the nature and weight of the penalties imposed are also factors to be taken into consideration when measuring the proportionality of the interference (see Sürek v. Turkey (no. 1) [GC], no. 26682/95, § 64, ECHR 1999-IV). In the present case the Court notes that the maximum penalty for the criminal offence in question was five years’ imprisonment. The applicant was sentenced to one year’s