Seselj Admits Advising Mladic on Lawyers
The two counsel the ex-Bosnian Serb army commander wants are not currently on tribunal list of approved lawyers.
Seselj Admits Advising Mladic on Lawyers
The two counsel the ex-Bosnian Serb army commander wants are not currently on tribunal list of approved lawyers.
Serbian nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj announced at the Hague tribunal this week that he instructed Ratko Mladic not to have any “confidence” in lawyers who are on the official list of defence counsel at the court.
“I did say to him, you cannot absolutely have any confidence in any one [of the lawyers] from the list of the tribunal,” Seselj said, after pleading not guilty to a third set of contempt charges.
He said that he and Mladic were staying on the same floor in the United Nations Detention Unit and often “socialised and played chess together”.
Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb army who was arrested on May 26 after 16 years on the run, was ordered out of the courtroom on July 4 after repeatedly interrupting the judges and refusing to enter a plea on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
He expressed frustration that the two lawyers he wants to represent him – a Serbian and a Russian - have not yet been officially appointed by the court.
Since defence lawyers have to meet various qualifications before they can practice at the tribunal, they have to go through a vetting process before they can be put on the official list of accepted counsel – and the two lawyers that Mladic wants are not currently on this list.
“Today a decision arrived that [Mladic] should be moved from our floor, and this decision was motivated by the assumption that by socialising with me and playing chess with me, [Mladic] came under my influence and that I influenced him to refuse everyone on list,” Seselj claimed.
“I feel guilt that Mr Mladic had to be moved on my account. A frustrated person cannot adequately defend himself in court.”
Since his surrender to the tribunal in 2003, Seselj has insisted on representing himself and has vowed on numerous occasions to “destroy” the Hague tribunal.
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 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 phase of the proceedings have 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 faced similar charges in a recently concluded second trial, in relation to 11 protected prosecution witnesses.
This third case – initiated at the end of May - relates to confidential material he allegedly failed to remove from his website.
The July 6 hearing was Seselj’s initial appearance in the third contempt case, but a trial date has yet to be set.
At the end of the hearing, Seselj asked that he be granted “annual leave” – a term later clarified to mean “provisional release”.
“I have been here uninterrupted for eight years and this has violated all world standards,” Seselj exclaimed.
On July 8, the judges in his contempt case rejected his request and stated that any application for provisional release needs to be brought before the judges in his criminal trial.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
