International Justice/ICTY: Dec ‘09/Jan '10

Serbian journalists and NGO activists have singled out an IWPR report on the issue of self-representation at the Hague tribunal for highlighting a complex issue largely ignored in the Serbian media.

Self-Representation Under Scrutiny, by IWPR reporter in The Hague Simon Jennings, focused on sensitivities and challenges around the issue.

According to the tribunal’s rules, indictees who wish to represent themselves in court have the right to do so. Former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, is the most recent in a line of defendants at the Hague tribunal who decided to use this right.

Other high-ranking indictees - such as Serbian nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj and the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic - also shunned professional help and preferred to represent themselves, which caused huge delays in their trials and numerous problems to the tribunal.

After Karadzic refused to appear in court at the start of his own trial at the end of October last year, the judges decided to appoint a stand-by counsel who will take over Karadzic’s defence if he continues to boycott the proceedings.

This new development has already caused a delay in the case, postponed until March 1 this year so that the stand-by counsel could have enough time to prepare.

However, the issue of self-representation has hardly been raised in the Serbian media at all, or treated as a strictly technical legal issue.

“This is a very good analysis of defendants’ right to self-representation and problems that stem from that right,” said Sonja Biserko, director of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, HCHR, in Serbia, which republished the article. “This is a very complex issue, but the media in Serbia hasn’t even attempted to explain it.

“That’s why IWPR’s article is very useful, because it gives a good insight into the problem, especially because comparisons were made between Karadzic’s case and Milosevic’s and Seselj’s trials.”

Milos Urosevic, from Serbian NGO Women in Black, said that Jennings’ article was “exceptionally good, because it provided a really good overview of the right to self-representation through comparative analysis of Karadzic’s, Seselj’s and Milosevic’s cases”.

“This article gave readers some new information on the tribunal’s rules and international justice in general. It also highlighted problems which occur when defendants abuse the right to self-representation.”

Aleksandra Mrkic, a news editor at Belgrade TV Avala, said the issue of self-representation first came to her attention during the Milosevic trial.

“When I thought about the right to self-representation, I couldn’t decide whether it was a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, Milosevic often abused that right, but on the other hand, denying him that right would probably have been a violation of his human rights.

“I appreciated the fact that in his article Simon Jennings looked into this issue from many different angles. He talked to a number of experts who gave their opinions and shed some light on this subject”.

Mrkic added that she found the article to be “thought-provoking”.

“Different views presented in this piece made me think about the basic principles of a fair trial and how difficult it is to respect them without obstructing justice at the same time. I wonder whether it is possible to enable a defendant to represent himself, but also to prevent him from using that right to postpone or boycott the trial,” she said.

Bojan Toncic, a journalist with Serbian electronic newspaper E-Novine, said Jennings’ article was “excellent, because it was very informative and raised some important questions about self-representation that no-one in the Serbian media was looking into”.