Seselj Contempt Trial Set for Resumption
Second time defendant has faced charges of revealing identities of protected witnesses.
Seselj Contempt Trial Set for Resumption
Second time defendant has faced charges of revealing identities of protected witnesses.
The second Hague tribunal contempt trial of Serbian nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj is slated to resume June 6, the tribunal announced this week.
The prosecution presented its case in February, but Seselj said he was unable to proceed with his defence case at that time because of a pending appeals decision relating to the funding of his defence team.
He requested travel and accommodation costs for his legal assistant and case manager, and also any costs related to the witnesses he intended to call.
Detained at the tribunal since 2003, Seselj is charged with nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity – including murder, torture and forcible transfer – for atrocities carried out in an effort to expel the non-Serb population from parts of Croatia and Bosnia between August 1991 and September 1993.
He represents himself in court and remains leader of the Serbian Radical Party, SRS, based in Belgrade.
Seselj’s criminal trial has endured repeated delays since it officially began in November 2007, a full year after the original trial date was postponed due to the accused’s hunger strike. The defence component of the case has yet to begin.
The accused first faced contempt charges in 2009, and was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to 15 months in prison for revealing details about protected prosecution witnesses in one of the books he authored.
He faces similar charges in this second trial, in relation to 11 protected prosecution witnesses. Seselj, however, contended in February that he “never published a single name of a [protected] witness”.
In the decision to resume the contempt trial, Judge O-Gon Kwon noted that the appeals chamber had issued a confidential decision on April 8 as regards funding for Seselj’s defence. In it, the appeals bench upheld an October ruling in which trial judges ordered the registrar to pay fifty per cent of the amount normally awarded to an indigent accused, Judge Kwon wrote.
Last July, the registry denied Seselj any financial assistance, stating that he has repeatedly failed to provide information that would prove he does not have sufficient funds for his defence.
When judges in his criminal case ordered the registry to pay fifty per cent of Seselj’s legal costs, deputy registrar Ken Roberts asked the appeals chamber to quash the decision, arguing that “the trial chamber cannot appropriate for itself a power that is explicitly conferred elsewhere, and that an accused before this tribunal remains ineligible to receive tribunal funding for his defence in the absence of established indigence”.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
