The president of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) and Hague convict Vojislav Šešelj said that four of his associates from that party received new indictments from the International Residual Mechanism in The Hague, a follower of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, but that he did not.
Yesterday, the media published a statement from an SRS official, who said that Šešelj and four other SRS officials were charged before the International Residual Mechanism for contempt of court.
Seselj claims that the residual mechanism charges them with contempt of court, as well as that he has already been sentenced three times to a total of more than four years in prison.
“Why are they prosecuting us – because of the publication of my books, the content of which is filled with Hague documents. There are many confidential documents, falsified, and I also published information about protected witnesses,” he said.
Seselj claims that Serbia cannot deliver radicals to the Mechanism, because contempt of court is one of the mildest criminal offenses for which fines are usually imposed.
The Hague prisoner and leader of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), Vojislav Šešelj, and four other SRS officials, were charged before the International Residual Mechanism in The Hague (MICT), a follower of the ICTY, for contempt of court, an SRS official confirmed to the Belgrade media.
Seselj was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for crimes against Croats and other non-Serb population in Vojvodina during the 90s.
The appeals panel of the Mechanism convicted him of incitement to persecution, deportation, inhumane acts, crimes against humanity and the persecution of Croats in 1992, after he was previously acquitted on all counts of the indictment by a first-instance verdict in June 2016. Seselj spent 12 years in custody.
The new Hague indictment includes Šešelj and SRS members Miljan Damjanović, Ljiljana and Ognjen Mihajlović and Miroljub Ignjatović, the party’s deputy president Aleksandar Šešelj told the agency.
“This is a new indictment for contempt of court,” said Aleksandar Šešelj, asserting that it is “a fictitious offense that the Hague Tribunal has given itself the right to introduce as a criminal offense”, and that according to the judgment of that court, “whatever they judge I can accuse someone of contempt of court”.
That indictment, explains Sešelj’s son, was brought because the radicals published books and other printed materials, as well as video and audio materials “that reveal how the prosecution witnesses were instructed and bribed to testify against Vojislav Šešelj” in his main trial.
Aleksandar Šešelj maintains that the filing of a new indictment in the pre-election period is not accidental and sees the Hague Tribunal as a “political instrument of interest and at the expense of the USA”, in accordance with the political situation.
Hina news agency reminds that extraordinary parliamentary elections in Serbia are scheduled for December 17, and at the same time elections will be held in Vojvodina, Belgrade, and 64 other cities and municipalities throughout Serbia. Seselj’s Radicals are an extra-parliamentary party and have submitted an electoral list, and in the elections in Belgrade they will support the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, which was created by separating from the SRS.
Aleksandar Šešelj sees the new indictment as a “persecution of the SRS” by which the Hague court, “as an instrument of the USA”, has been trying to destroy that party for more than 20 years “as the main opponent for achieving the goals of the USA in Serbia”.
He is convinced that the government in Serbia “will not extradite anyone” to the Hague Tribunal. “I think that within the ruling party and the coalition there is no readiness for that to happen,” said Aleksandar Šešelj.
