Seselj Revels in Court Theatrics

Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the Serbian Radical Party, SRS, has always made his disdain for the Hague tribunal clear, threatening repeatedly to “destroy” it.

“Personally, I do not recognise this Hague tribunal,” said Seselj in June 1994. “But if I am ever invited to The Hague I’ll gladly go there immediately. I would never miss such a show.”

But his appearance in the “show” over the last two and a half years of his detention in the Hague have been extremely limited.

That is, until a few weeks ago, when Seselj got his chance to bask in the limelight, as a defence witness in the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.

He used the opportunity to seek to rally support for the SRS, the largest party in Belgrade’s parliament - albeit in opposition - by continuing to promote the Serb nationalist dream of a Greater Serbia.

But, maverick to the last, he also revelled in telling the court that many of his most outspoken pronouncements during the Nineties were pure “bombast”, for “political propaganda” purposes rather than any other.

Seselj claims that his supporters are not put off by his “untruths”, because “the entire public knows that they are not true but are simply amusing and said for a certain particular purpose”.

So he continues to play semantic games in The Hague, while gaining support in Belgrade.

Eventually, though, Seselj will have his own day in court, where he will have to provide a defence to eight counts of crimes against humanity and six of violations of the laws or customs of war between 1991 and 1993, during the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts.

The charges include extermination, murder, torture, and deportation, forcible transfer of population and wanton destruction and plunder of private and public property.

Seselj is not accused of physically committing all the crimes listed. Nor is he charged, as many others at The Hague, with command responsibility for crimes committed by subordinates. It is rather for his role as paramilitary supremo and propagandist for Serb nationalism that he will be on trial.

This week an apparently exasperated judge, Carmel Agius, entered a plea of not guilty for the defendant to an amended indictment charging him with crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The Serb politician has refused to accept a court-appointed lawyer, and complained that he had not been allowed to speak to his “expert defence team” to consult them how to plead.

The judge cut off his complaints, entered the not guilty plea, astounding Seselj, and wrapped up the session in less than ten minutes – possibly an all time tribunal record for brevity.

Seselj is accused, along with a large group of senior Serb politicians – including Milosevic – and military leaders, of participating in a “joint criminal enterprise” to forcibly remove Croats and Muslims and other non-Serb populations from Croatia, Bosnia and parts of Vojvodina in Serbia.

The prosecution says that Seselj had either the knowledge and intention necessary for the commission of the crimes, or that he knew most of the crimes in the indictment were “the natural and foreseeable consequence” of the joint criminal enterprise.

He is accused of recruiting, financing, supporting and directing Serbian volunteers known as Chetniks or Seseljevci ( Seselj’s men). According to the indictment he “indoctrinated them with extreme ethnic rhetoric”, so that when they committed crimes they did so “with particular violence and brutality”.

In particular, Seselj is accused of making “inflammatory speeches” when visiting different volunteer units in Croatia and Bosnia, calling for the expulsion of Croat civilians and planning and preparing the takeover of a number of towns and villages in the two republics and “the subsequent forcible removal of the majority of the non-Serb population” in these areas.

The indictment against him specifically mentions “help from Slobodan Milosevic” in getting the financial logistical and political support needed for the take-overs.

The Seselj-Milosevic relationship - of which the tribunal is seeing the latest chapters - has been a key element in the Serb nationalist project of the Nineties.

Milosevic’s party, the Socialist Party of Serbia, SPS, engineered Seselj’s ascent into parliament in this period and used him to garner the ultra-nationalist vote. Milosevic’s control of the media meant he could provide a platform for Seselj to exploit.

But when Serbia came under pressure from the international community over ethnic cleansing in 1993, the SPS turned on Seselj, accusing him of war crimes and describing him as “the personification of violence and primitivity”.

After some time in the political wilderness, Seselj re-emerged in 1998 as a major supporter of the war in Kosovo, and as runner-up in the Serbian presidential elections, became Serbia’s deputy premier to Milosevic’s president.

The political ballet between the two men was on display again in September, when Seselj spent six weeks in the witness box at the Milosevic trial.

For Seselj it was the chance to do what he enjoys best – perform. “I like it better in the courtroom than in a prison cell,” he declared at one point in his testimony. “I could keep on coming until the new year as far as I’m concerned.”

When challenged about past statements he’d made that appeared to incriminate Milosevic in almost everything – from being the worst traitor in Serbian history, to arms trafficking and theft – Seselj declared that they were political rhetoric, used simply to entertain people.

That gave the prosecutor Geoffrey Nice the chance to attack Seselj’s credibility, suggesting that his attitude towards the Hague tribunal would make him likely to lie to its judges.

In the same vein, the prosecutor also put it to Seselj that records of his past interviews suggested that he was an exceptionally talented liar.

“I’d like you to be as convincing as that when you’re lying,” replied Seselj.

The prosecutor also replayed clips of speeches he had made, in which Seselj had recommended the “amputation” of Croatia, warned that Yugoslavia would soon become “Serboslavia” and stated that Bosnian Muslims who weren’t prepared to show loyalty to a Serb state should “start packing”.

But Seselj denied that he had been seeking to stir Serbs into a frenzy of hatred, or that he had hoped to instil fear in other ethnic groups. Instead, he argued, he’d simply been warning both Serbs and non-Serbs alike about potential dangers they faced.

Another example was the notorious statement he made when war broke out between Serbs and Croats. Seselj supposedly said, “We will gouge the Croats eyes out with rusty forks and spoons.” He told the tribunal this comment was part of the “black humour” he so enjoys.

Seselj’s own case is not yet scheduled to start. Another delay has been caused by the prosecutor’s request in June for it to be joined with those of three other senior Serb officials: Jovica Stanisic, Franko Simatovic and Milan Martic.

The prosecution argues that all their alleged crimes relate to a campaign to forcibly remove a large part of the non-Serb population – Muslims and Croats – from Croatia and Bosnia “in order to make them part of a Serb-dominated state”.

Stanisic, former chief of Serbia’s state security, is accused of using Seselj’s volunteers to carry out executions and forced deportations especially in Knin, the main town in the then Serb-held region of Croatia known as Krajina.

The commander of the Special Operations Unit Franko "Frenki" Simatovic led a special ops unit better known as “Frenki’s Boys”, with allegedly close ties to Seselj.

Both Stanisic and Simatovic face five counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war for their roles as trainers of special armed units near Knin.

Martic, a former high-ranking official in Krajina, is charged with 19 counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war, while creating and directing his own police force.

The prosecution says it would be sensible to join the four, because Martic, Stanisic and Simatovic have approximately 29 witnesses in common, and Stanisic, Simatovic and Seselj share 26 witnesses, and one key former prominent political figure from the region will give testimony vital to all four cases.

Hague observer for the Coalition for International Justice, Edgar Chen told IWPR he is eager to see whether the prosecution will able to establish any “structural links between Seselj's paramilitary activities and the ruling establishment in Belgrade”, meaning the kinds of finance, logistics, overall support that were involved.

One source of support for the paramilitaries would have been the state security apparatus – headed by two of the defendants, Stanisic and Simatovic.

Seselj has disagreed strongly with the proposed joinder, telling the court that he did not have “anything in common” with Martic and had “always been in conflict” with Stanisic and Simatovic.

A decision on the joinder has still to be made.

When Seselj surrendered to the tribunal, nearly three years ago, ostentatiously buying his own ticket, 10,000 people showed up to a going away rally in Belgrade.

His defiant attitude to the tribunal and his widely broadcast performance for Milosevic have kept both his name in the news and his support high. “It’s no accident that his party is the biggest single party in Serbia” one Belgrade observer, who did not want to be named, told IWPR.

But others suggest that his party is not riding high in the polls because of its leader, nor because of his continued espousal of the Greater Serbia dream.

“Its appeal today is not based on getting thousands of Serbs marching back to Knin,” said Tim Judah, author of several books on the Balkans conflict. “The main issues for people are jobs and money. People want a wage of more than 200 euro a month – a party like the SRS gets votes because it promises to drop the price of bread.”

He says that even though a small band of hard-line supporters continue to paste graffiti across Serbia lauding Seselj as a hero, “things have moved on”.

Meanwhile, Seselj himself is going nowhere. He’s stuck in The Hague, but maybe, that’s where he thinks he can be most effective.

“I am convinced that I will defeat The Hague tribunal. It is a challenge that I cannot resist. That alone was worth living for.”

Adrienne N Kitchen is an IWPR intern in The Hague.