Seselj Won't Call Defence Witnesses
Defendant says expense dispute stopped him presenting evidence.
Seselj Won't Call Defence Witnesses
Defendant says expense dispute stopped him presenting evidence.
Serbian nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj told judges this week that he did not plan to bring any defence witnesses to testify on his behalf and would instead proceed directly to his closing arguments.
Seselj, who is representing himself at the Hague tribunal, claimed that he has been “prevented” from presenting his own evidence because the “tribunal has refused to pay the expenses” of his team of legal advisors and other consultants.
He said he would ask for ten days to present his closing arguments.
Presiding Judge Jean-Claude Antonetti reminded him that in October 2010, the chamber ordered the tribunal to pay half the expenses of his defence team, and that he had been asked to furnish the court with the requisite information by early June.
Seselj said that he "couldn't remember having read that document", and that he "maybe even threw it away". He said he was owed “least 1.4 million euro for expenses incurred since 2003", and that he wanted to receive "half of all that, not [just] the expenses since October 2010".
At the outset of this week’s hearing, Judge Antonetti said the accused’s request for a termination of proceedings – which he filed for “violations of his right to a fair trial within a reasonable amount of time” – had been rejected.
In addition, the judge said a medical examination showed that the defendant was healthy.
Seselj surrendered to the tribunal in 2003 and remains leader of the Serbian Radical party, SRS, based in Belgrade.
He is charged with nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity – including murder, torture and forcible transfer – relating to efforts to expel non-Serbs from parts of Croatia and Bosnia between August 1991 and September 1993.
Seselj’s trial has undergone repeated delays since it officially began in November 2007, a full year after the original trial date was postponed because the accused mounted a hunger strike.
In July 2009, Seselj was found guilty of contempt for revealing confidential details about protected witnesses in one of the books he authored. A second contempt trial, on similar charges, recently concluded, and Seselj now faces a third set of contempt charges for allegedly refusing to remove confidential material from his website.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.
