Seselj Defence Granted More Time

Seselj had applied to conduct his own defence, but in late August Presiding Judge Alphons Orie announced the decision to assign him a permanent defence counsel, because of his “unwillingness to understand and respect” the tribunal’s ground rules.



This was quickly followed by an announcement that the UK lawyer David Hooper would fill the shoes of Seselj’s standby counsel, Tjarda van der Spoel.



Seselj was indicted in February 2003 for 14 counts of war crimes committed in Bosnia and Croatia between 1991 and 1993, and of being part of a joint criminal enterprise, together with the late Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, whose goal was the creation of a “Greater Serbia”.



However, in September, trial judges requested that the prosecution consider cutting some of the charges against Seselj to reduce the number of witnesses and speed up the judicial process.



The prosecution’s senior trial attorney Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff conceded to this demand, dropping charges relating to crimes perpetrated in several municipalities.



In his application to slow down the scheduling of the trial, filed on October 11, Hooper explained that the extensive evidence has recently been made available to the defence, so more time is needed in order to be sufficiently ready for the trial.



He said that during the non-court sitting days, the defence would be able to prepare its case thoroughly, without jeopardising the trial’s start date of November 2.



The prosecution initially opposed the defence’s application, saying that the proposed schedule for the case would make it difficult for prosecution witnesses to share their testimonies in court.



Inevitably, the witnesses would either have to travel back and forth to the tribunal, or remain in The Hague away from their families for extended periods of time.



In the trial chamber’s decision of October 19, Judge Orie said that while agreeing with the defence’s application to sit for only a few days a week during the first couple of months, the chamber will take a "flexible approach " to hearing witnesses, to avoid them being exposed to "additional risks or being inconvenienced ".



This translates as flexibility to tack-on an extra day to the two-day or three-day schedules for November and December, in order to let a witness complete his or her testimony.



In granting the request, Judge Orie said that because the proposed schedule would only operate for a short period of time, it would "not affect the overall expeditiousness or fairness of the trial proceedings ".