ICTY: Prosecution of Florence Hartmann

A Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the formerYugoslavia, ICTY, issued “an order in lieu of the indictment” againstFlorence Hartmann, former spokeswoman of the Hague Prosecution, on contempt.

Justice Report is told by the Tribunal that this document has the sameconnotations as indictment, but, considering the fact that it has been issuedby the Court, and not by the Prosecution, it is called “an order”.

“The Trial Chamber orders the prosecution of Florence Hartmann forknowingly and willfully disclosing information in knowing violation of an orderof a Chamber,” the Tribunal’s public announcement reads.

The Order summons Hartmann to appear before the Court on September 15, 2008.

The Hague Tribunal considers that the former spokesperson of the Prosecutionauthored “a text published in 2007 and 2008 that disclosed informationrelating to confidential decisions of the Tribunal’s Appeals Chamber in thecase of Slobodan Milosevic”.

“Florence Hartmann knew that the information was confidential at thetime disclosure was made and that the decisions from which the information wasdrawn were ordered to be filed confidentially,” says the ICTY’s order.

The Hague Prosecution chargedSlobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia, with crimes committed in Bosniaand Herzegovina.

In December 2001 Milosevicpleaded not guilty to all allegations contained in the indictment. Theproceedings were dismissed after he had died in the Detention Unit inScheveningen five years later.

As of 2000 Florence Hartmann was spokesperson of Carla Del Ponte, former ChiefProsecutor with the Hague Tribunal. Six years later she left the post andpublished a book entitled “Peace and Punishment”.

In an earlier interview Hartmann told Bosnian media that her book presented “asegment of the Tribunal’s work, which was not on record”.