Seselj Asks Judges to Dismiss Charges

Rachel Irwin

Senior Reporter

Friday, 11 March, 2011

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Serbian nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj this week asked Hague tribunal judges to dismiss all the charges in his indictment and said that he would seek financial compensation for the eight years he has spent incarcerated in The Hague.

“The indictment has been shattered to pieces,” Seselj declared, adding that he had already secured the help of a lawyer who intended to sue the United Nations for damages if the court did not pay him voluntarily.

“I’m only asking for ten million euros on the condition that payment is made immediately and we no longer hear from each other,” said Seselj, who continues to represent himself in the courtroom. “If there are any problems … I have the right to sue every judge.”

This week’s hearing, known as a 98 bis procedure, is offered to all defendants at the conclusion of the prosecution’s case, before the defence begins calling its own witnesses.

After hearing lengthy statements from both parties, the judges can enter a verdict of not guilty on one or more counts if they find that there is no evidence to support the charges. The presiding judge in Seselj’s case, Jean-Claude Antonetti, said this decision – which is delivered orally – could take weeks or months.

During the three hours allotted for his presentation, Seselj, who is a lawyer, contended that “it’s quite clear there is no evidence whatsoever that could be used as grounds for a conviction”.

The indictment against him was purely political, he said, and a plot by “western powers” who did not want him returning to Belgrade, where he continues to lead the Serbian Radical Party, SRS.

At the same time, however, the indictment and ensuing trial allowed him to become a “significant historical personality”.

“No textbook of international criminal law will be written in the future without mentioning my case,” Seselj exclaimed. “What more can a man expect in a modest little life?”

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 is accused of giving numerous inflammatory speeches and recruiting a force of volunteers who allegedly murdered, raped and tortured non-Serbs in both Croatia and Bosnia.

Seselj’s 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. 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, began last month.

During this week’s hearing, Seselj claimed that his trial had been infected by “false witnesses” who fabricated their testimony. He also denied that he ever used “hate speech” to encourage the deportation and murder of non-Serbs.

He referred to one of his speeches in the Serbian village of Hrtkovci, located in the Vojvodina province. The prosecution alleges that Seselj read out a list of Croat residents who should leave for Croatia, and therefore he was responsible for deporting them.

“You know how deportation is done,” Seselj said. “Somebody has to leave their house or apartment, and have little time to pack up…they are happy to come out of it alive.”

In Hrtkovci, he continued, Croats were not deported but instead encouraged to swap houses with Serb refugees from Croatia.

“Nobody can call that [a] crime of deportation,” he said, adding that he did “advocate the exchange of property” in his political speeches.

“Give me one single speech by which I incited people to commit crimes,” he said. “I always opposed the crimes, I always publicly condemned them. The prosecutor wrote things in the indictment and has forgotten to prove any of those crimes.”

Seselj went on to claim that the prosecution “advocated the thesis” that he is the “worst person under the sun”.

“But … what did I do specifically? Where did I commit those crimes? Where did I abet those crimes?” he asked. “As for the fact that I am the worst person in the world…you don’t even have to prove that, I admit that I am the worst person under the sun.”

As for the volunteers that the accused recruited - often referred to as Seselj’s men – his task was to “rally them, to provide them with transportation”, he said.

“If you had proven here in this courtroom that those volunteers that I sent away indeed committed crimes ascribed to me I would at least suffer moral consequences,” he said. “The prosecution did not prove that the volunteers I sent to the front ever committed a crime anywhere. Not a single killing was proven.”

“There were no sexual assaults that you managed to prove either,” he said later, adding this was also the case for the alleged torture, beatings and robbing of civilians. And if there was any looting, “it wasn’t organised plunder”, he said.

“You did not prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt except that you hate me and want to see me convicted at all costs,” Seselj exclaimed.

When it was the prosecution’s turn to respond, lawyer Lisa Biersay said that the accused “promoted the idea that Serbia had to be carved out” and that he “raised and deployed armed volunteers and committed persecution through hate speech.

“The accused propagated a climate of fear in which Serbs could believe themselves to be under threat,” she continued, and spoke at length about his repeated use of the word Ustasha, a term referring to Croatian fascists who collaborated with the Nazis during World War Two.

In wartime rallies, Seselj would claim that “hordes of Ustasha are attacking Serbian villages, women and children”, Biersay said.

“He used the pretext of historical wrongs to justify revenge and violence as morally legitimate and necessary,” she continued.

He also targeted the non-Serb population in Bosnia, Biersay said. She referred to a 1992 speech in Serbia, where Seselj is alleged to have said that “the only thing left in Bosnia and Hercegovina is to clean up the left bank of the Drina [River]” which borders Serbia and was populated with mostly Bosniaks.

She said that Seselj’s own volunteers participated in this “clean up” effort and committed “brutal crimes” in several areas of the country, including Zvornik, where numerous non-Serb civilians were tortured and murdered. According to one witness Biersay quoted, “Seselj had absolute power and made all decisions himself”.

Biersay said that Seselj also sent volunteers to Croatia, and that the accused visited the town of Vukovar shortly before it fell to Serbian forces on November 18, 1991. While there, he allegedly held a meeting saying that “this entire area is soon to be cleared of Ustasha”.

“A few days later in Vukovar, [Seselj] spoke to many… [of his] volunteers who would later be identified as most the vicious… [and told them] ‘Not one Ustasha must leave Vukovar alive’,” Biersay said. On November 20, 1991 Seselj’s volunteers allegedly participated in the torture and killing of over 200 Croats at a pig farm in Ovcara.

Seselj “fiercely” denied that the meeting and subsequent speech ever happened.

As for Hrtkovci, where the accused claims he encouraged property exchange and not deportation, Biersay quoted Seselj as saying in speech that “in this place, there is no room for Croats”.

“He pounded his chest several times, and said, ‘Let them go to their homeland’,” Biersay said, adding that there was applause and shouts of “Ustasha” from the crowd in response. “People took these threats very seriously and many witnesses testified that they left their homes and fled to Croatia as direct result of the accused’s speech,” she continued.

At the end of the hearing, Seselj thanked the prosecution for showing several wartime video clips of him delivering speeches to large crowds.

“When you showed clips of my speeches, you did me a service and reminded the Serbian people what I did over those years and how I gained my reputation among the Serbs,” he said. “I did not have a position of power, but if I had, things would have ended differently, believe you me when I say that.”

Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.