Belgrade Could Try Serbian Radicals Wanted by Hague
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Judge Aydin Sefa Akay, a judge at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, said on Thursday that the Serbian Justice Ministry has indicated it is “ready to conduct criminal proceedings” against Serbian Radical Party politicians Vjerica Radeta and Petar Jojic.
Before making a final decision, Akay said he has asked special prosecutor Dianne Ellis to provide an opinion, giving her a deadline of one month to indicate whether the transfer of the case to Serbia would be “in the interests of justice and… respect the rights of the accused”.
The tribunal accused Radeta and Jojic in October 2012 of having influenced witnesses in the Hague Tribunal trial of their party leader Vojislav Seselj by threatening, blackmailing and bribing them to either change their testimonies or not testify at all.
The tribunal has since been seeking the arrest of the two nationalist politicians and Interpol issued ‘red notices’ for them in March 2017.
Belgrade has so far refused to arrest them, and proposed that their trial took place before a Serbian court. The UN tribunal initially rejected the suggestion.
A third Serbian Radical Party member, Jovo Ostojic, who was also accused in the case, died last June.
Under a first-instance verdict handed down by the Tribunal in March 2016, Seselj was acquitted of committing wartime crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia.
The prosecution filed an appeal and the second-instance verdict is due to be delivered on April 11.
Seselj was temporarily released for cancer treatment in November 2014 and since then has lived in Serbia, where he is an MP in the national parliament. He has refused to return to The Hague for the verdict.
