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| Serb nationalist Vojislav Šešelj acquitted of war crimes at The Hague | Serb nationalist Vojislav Šešelj acquitted of war crimes at The Hague |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| Serb ultranationalist Vojislav Šešelj has been acquitted of all nine charges of committing atrocities by the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. | Serb ultranationalist Vojislav Šešelj has been acquitted of all nine charges of committing atrocities by the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. |
| The former deputy prime minister of Serbia, 61, who is being treated for cancer, had been accused of recruiting and arming the Serb paramilitaries blamed for carrying out war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia during the early 1990s. | |
| The ruling comes less than a week after the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was sentenced to 40 years in prison after being found guilty of genocide over the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica. Šešelj, however, was found to have had no military “hierarchical responsibility” for the volunteers that he encouraged to join the Serb army. | |
| Šešelj was not at the courtroom in The Hague to hear the verdict. He had repeatedly refused to cooperate with the tribunal, staging a hunger strike, refusing to enter a plea and declining to present a defence. He had been allowed to return to Serbia because of his deteriorating health. | Šešelj was not at the courtroom in The Hague to hear the verdict. He had repeatedly refused to cooperate with the tribunal, staging a hunger strike, refusing to enter a plea and declining to present a defence. He had been allowed to return to Serbia because of his deteriorating health. |
| Prosecutors had charged Šešelj, who founded the Serbian Radical party, with three counts of crimes against humanity and six counts of war crimes. The accusations included that he incited torture, murder, forcible deportations and persecution on religious and racial grounds. | |
| Šešelj was alleged to have propagated an inflammatory policy of uniting “all Serbian lands” in a homogeneous Serbian state, which he referred to as greater Serbia. | Šešelj was alleged to have propagated an inflammatory policy of uniting “all Serbian lands” in a homogeneous Serbian state, which he referred to as greater Serbia. |
| But the ICTY judgment said the prosecution’s case had been full of “confusion” and that “a lot of the evidence shows that [his] collaboration was aimed at defending the Serbs and the traditionally Serb territories or at preserving Yugoslavia, not at committing the alleged crimes”. | |
| In the majority ruling, the ICTY’s presiding judge, Jean-Claude Antonetti, said: “One of the key findings of the [court] was to note that while Vojislav Šešelj may have had a certain amount of moral authority over his party’s volunteers, they were not his subordinates when they were engaged in military operations. | |
| “The totality of the evidence substantiates the fact that the purpose of sending volunteers was not to commit crimes, but to support the war effort. | |
| “The ... findings do not by any means presume to underestimate, and even less to conceal, the crimes committed in different localities in Croatia and [Bosnia], in which the volunteers deployed by Vojislav Šešelj or his party may have taken part or have been indirectly involved. | |
| “The majority [of the judges] simply notes that it is not satisfied that the recruitment and subsequent deployment of volunteers implies that Vojislav Šešelj knew of these crimes on the ground, or that he instructed or endorsed them.” | |
| Antonetti continued: “The [court] by a majority ... was unable to find beyond all reasonable doubt that, in calling upon the Serbs to “cleanse” Bosnia ... Vojislav Šešelj was calling for ethnic cleansing of Bosnia’s non-Serbs. | |
| “The majority [of judges], in fact, believes that the evidence supplied by the prosecution is not sufficient to exclude the possibility, in view of the context, that in making this appeal, Vojislav Šešelj was rather participating in the war effort by galvanising the Serb forces ... Following this verdict, Vojislav Šešelj is now a free man.” | |
| Welcoming his acquittal, Šešelj praised the UN judges who dismissed the charges. “This time, after all the trials that accused innocent Serbs, who received draconian sentences, two judges appeared who are honourable and fair people,” he said at a press conference in Belgrade. | |
| The judges had “shown that their professionalism and honour are above any political pressure” and brought “the only possible verdict” despite it being an “anti-Serb court”, Seselj said. “The moment I left for The Hague, I knew they could not prove I had committed a single crime.” | |
| His acquittal was criticised by Croatian survivors of the 1991-95 conflict. “This acquittal leaves me speechless,” said Vesna Bosanac, the head of a hospital in Vukovar besieged by pro-Šešelj militia in 1991. “The only thing that awaits him is the judgment of God.” | |
| The verdict is likely to boost the political prospects of Šešelj and his supporters ahead of Serbia’s parliamentary elections next month. The prosecution can appeal against the judgment. | |
| Šešelj’s trial began in 2007 and heard 99 witnesses. Since its establishment in 1993, the ICTY has indicted 161 people for serious violations of humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001. Proceedings against 149 have finished and cases against 11 accused are continuing. |