Hague Court Dismisses Appeal Against Radicals’ Trial in Serbia

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals on Thursday dismissed a prosecution appeal against handing over to Serbia the case of two Serbian Radical Party members who are accused of interfering with witnesses at the trial of their leader, nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj.

According to the UN court’s rules, the appeals chamber could not make the decision to hand over the case, but only to return it to the judge who made a ruling in June that the case be given to Serbian judiciary.

The two Radicals, Petar Jojic and Vjerica Radeta, are accused by the UN court of contempt of court in the trial of Seselj, who was convicted of war crimes in April 2018.

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

The Serbian authorities have been locked in a long-running dispute with the tribunal over the arrest and extradition of the two Radicals.

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 several times to act on its order to arrest and extradite them.

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

The tribunal has also 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.