Hague Court Says Serbia Must Agree to Try Radicals

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Thursday called on the Serbian authorities to declare within 30 days that they have the “jurisdiction, willingness and readiness to accept the trial in the case” against the two wanted Serbian Radical Party members, Petar Jojic and Vjerica Radeta.

Jojic and Radeta are wanted by the UN court for influencing witnesses in the trial of their party leader, Vojislav Seselj.

They are accused of threatening, blackmailing and bribing witnesses to either change their testimonies or to not testify at all.

There has been a long-running dispute between the Hague court and Serbia over the arrest and extradition of the two Radicals, who were charged in October 2012. Belgrade has so far refused to detain them and send them to The Hague for trial.

The Serbian authorities have previously proposed that their trial takes place before a Serbian court, but the court rejected the suggestion.

Judge Aydin Akay said that Serbia must file a written motion on the issue in order for the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals to make a decision on whether to cede the case against Jojic and Radeta to the Serbian judiciary, given the fact that the crime with which they are charged upon was committed in Serbia.

The Tribunal submitted a warrant ordering their arrest in January 2015.

But in May 2016, the war crimes chamber of the Belgrade Higher Court ruled that there were no legal grounds for extraditing the Radicals because Serbia’s Law on Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal obliged Belgrade to extradite people charged with war crimes, but not those charged with contempt of court.

In October 2016, the tribunal issued an international warrant for the arrest of Jojic and Radeta, saying that Serbia had refused to act on the Tribunal’s order to arrest and extradite them several times.

Interpol then issued ‘red notices’ for Jojic and Radeta.

The Hague Tribunal has reported Serbia to the UN Security Council several times for non-cooperation in the case.

A third Radical Party member who was also accused in the case, Jovo Ostojic, died in Serbia last year.

The Radicals’ leader Seselj was acquitted of wartime crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia under a first-instance verdict handed down by the UN court in March 2016.

The prosecution filed an appeal and the second-instance verdict is expected to be delivered this year.

Seselj was released by the court in 2014 for cancer treatment and returned to Serbia. He has since refused to go back to The Hague.