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| Hague official guilty of contempt | Hague official guilty of contempt |
| (10 minutes later) | |
| A former official at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague has been convicted of contempt of court. | A former official at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague has been convicted of contempt of court. |
| French journalist Florence Hartmann - the court's spokeswoman for six years - was fined 7,000 euros (£6,100). | French journalist Florence Hartmann - the court's spokeswoman for six years - was fined 7,000 euros (£6,100). |
| She was found guilty of disclosing the existence of confidential documents on Serbian government involvement in the Bosnian war of the 1990s. | She was found guilty of disclosing the existence of confidential documents on Serbian government involvement in the Bosnian war of the 1990s. |
| The documents were discussed in a book and article published by Ms Hartmann. | The documents were discussed in a book and article published by Ms Hartmann. |
| The confidential documents in question were only released by Belgrade for the trial of the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. | |
| The tribunal ruled that it had the right to prevent documents from being leaked and that Hartmann, as a permanent employee, was fully aware of the court's rules and procedures. | |
| "It is necessary to discourage the accused or any person from disclosing confidential information in future," said presiding Judge Bakone Moloto. | |
| War crimes links? | |
| Hartmann had argued the documents should have been made available during a separate trial at the International Court of Justice in which Bosnia unsuccessfully tried to sue Serbia for genocide. | |
| The precise content of the documents has never been made public, but they are thought to chronicle contacts between the Serbian government and the Bosnian Serb army. | |
| Hartmann maintained they could prove a link between Belgrade and war crimes committed in Bosnia - most notably the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the Bosnian village of Srebrenica in 1995. | |
| Critics of the case say that such papers should never have been the subject of a confidentiality order in the first place. | |
| The French journalist had faced a maximum sentence of up to seven years in jail or a fine of almost £90,000 ($150,000). | |
| Her defence counsel said other journalists had written about the documents before her publications and that her case was merely intended to set a legal precedent. |