Serbia: Ultranationalist will skip evidence, move to ten-day-long closing statement

The Hague, 23 August (AKI) - Serbian ultranationalist leader Vojislav Seselj said on Tuesday he won’t present defense evidence before the United Nations war crimes tribunal but will go directly to the closing statement.

“I have been prevented from presenting defense evidence and am preparing for closing statement,” Seselj told the court. “I will ask ten days for the closing statement,” he added.

Seselj, the leader of ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, has been accused by the court of comimtting crimes against Muslims and Croats during 1991-1995 war that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. The crimes were allegedly carried out by volunteers recruited by his party.

He denied the charges and voluntarily surrendered to the tribunal in February 2003 and has been in the Hague detention ever since. The prosecution ended presenting its evidence earlier this year and Seselj has said he would not present defense witnesses because the prosecution proved nothing against him.

But he told the tribunal on Tuesday he can’t present his evidence because the tribunal has refused to pay expenses for his defense team. The presiding judge Jean-Claude Antonetti said the tribunal had agreed to finance half of his defense expenses from October last year.

Seselj retorted he could only agree to one half of the expenses dating from 2003 when he surrendered to the tribunal amounting to 1.4 million euros. Seselj’s party colleague, Boris Aleksic told a press conference in Belgrade the tribunal has spent 20 million euros on salaries of judges, prosecutors and personnel in Seselj’s case, but he “hasn’t received a single euro”.

Antonetti said Seselj resorted to “all kinds of legal tricks” to swing public opinion in his favor and to show that he was “denied the right to defense”. Prosecutor Mathias Marcussen said Seselj himself had “set up the situation in which he allegedly can’t present his evidence”.

As the main trial dragged on, Seselj has been sentenced to 15 months in jail for contempt of court for allegedly revealing names of protected witnesses. Two more contempt trials are pending.

Seselj has said the tribunal resorted to contempt of court because it had no evidence against him in the main case and wanted to keep him in jail as long as possible. But he said the term of sentence didn’t matter to him because his main goal was to “throw the tribunal in the mud.”

“You can sentence me to life in prison, but you can’t win over me,” Seselj told the court. “I’m the winner here and I will go directly from the courtroom into history and glory,” he said.

Judge Antonetti said the tribunal will decide on Wednesday on how the trial will proceed and set the next hearing for October.