BALKANS: Trial to Proceed Without Accused

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Nov 28 2006 (IPS) - The trial of ultranationalist Serb leader Vojislav Seselj will proceed in his absence at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague in the Netherlands, although the leader of former paramilitaries has been in detention since February 2003.

As the long-awaited trial opened Monday, Seselj sent a message to the panel of judges claiming he was too weak to attend. He went on hunger strike two weeks ago.

In response, presiding judge Alphons Orie decided that Seselj has now lost the right to defend himself.

“He persists in not taking food, he persists in not being present,” Judge Orie said. “The court finds that the accused’s self-representation has essentially obstructed proper and expeditious proceedings.” He instructed standby defence lawyers to take over..

The trial was immediately resumed, with prosecution presenting its case.

Seselj is accused of war crimes and forced evictions of non-Serbs in conspiracy with former president Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic died in the detention unit of the ICTY in March this year, without a sentence being pronounced, after four years in detention for trial.

Vojislav Seselj (52) is one of the most prominent political figures to face trial before the ICTY, founded by the United Nations in the early 1990s when the bloody war of disintegration of former Yugoslavia was raging.

Seselj’s paramilitary units spread fear all across Croatia and Bosnia in the fighting that took more than 100,000 lives, mostly of non-Serbs. In many interviews he boasted that the paramilitaries were set up with the blessing of Milosevic. His vitriolic anti-Croatian and anti-Bosniak propaganda was often described as “what Milosevic thinks, Seselj says”.

Seselj introduced unprecedented hate speech in Serbia, and some of it lingers.

In Serbia, the trial of Seselj is controversial. The country is still deeply split over the wars, with large parts of the public believing Serbs committed no war crimes.

Seselj’s ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), by far the most popular with a 30-35 percent constant voting body, dubbed the tribunal’s decision as “the obstruction of justice against the only real anti-globalist whose aim is to prove his innocence.”

“Seselj is denied his basic human right to defend himself,” SRS leader Aleksandar Vucic declared. Others in the party said Seselj will go “to the end” with the hunger strike, and will refuse intravenous feeding.

Seselj went on hunger strike Nov. 10 in protest against the decision of the ICTY to ban visits by his wife Jadranka, possible appointment of defence lawyers for him, and against what he saw as the attitude of the tribunal in general.

The date was no coincidence, because parliamentary elections in Serbia due in January were called on Nov. 10. They are expected to be the final countdown between SRS and the pro-democracy parties that have run the country since 2000.

Seselj’s supporters are mostly “victims of transition” from the impoverished part of Serbia that paid a high price for introduction of the market economy in 2000. Serb refugees who settled in Serbia after the wars in Croatia and Bosnia are also a big source of SRS votes.

Analysts say the controversy has become divisive when truth and reconciliation are needed.

“If Seselj’s health worsens profoundly, the already ruined reputation of the ICTY here will be broken into pieces,” analyst Vladimir Radomirovic told IPS. “Any dramatic news from The Hague will become an explosive device in Serbia, where the heated electoral atmosphere is already on.”

“If Seselj dies, Serbia will have another martyr with undisputed popularity,” analyst Zoran Stojanovic told IPS. “This almost happened with Milosevic when he died in custody of the ICTY. The truth thus remains blurred and no clear ground for reconciliation exists.”

“The decision to continue the trial with an appointed defence looks like a mistake to me,” Ljiljana Smajlovic, a journalist who specialised in covering the tribunal told Belgrade media. “It’s a mistake both in a psychological and a legal sense. Seselj did not obstruct justice if he waited for almost four years for his trial to begin.”

Seselj voluntarily surrendered to the tribunal in February 2003 with the aim of defending himself and “to expose the dirty, biased and anti-Serb construction of the West.”

Since his first pre-trial appearances, he mocked the institution by calling its judges “spies” and ridiculing lawyers as “people with bird nests on heads,” referring to the wigs worn by barristers. He demanded all documents be given to him in Cyrillic Serbian alphabet, on paper. He declined to use a computer, because it “radiates”.