Hague prosecution won't appeal Šešelj decision

Hague prosecution won't appeal Šešelj decision

BELGRADE -- Hague Tribunal (ICTY) Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz says his office will not appeal a decision to grant provisional release to Vojislav Šešelj.

Brammertz told Belgrade-based daily Većernje Novosti that the main reason for that lay in the fact that the OTP had no access to medical records of Vojislav Šešelj, who had become ill with cancer in the UN detention unit in Scheveningen.

Asked if he thought it was just and proper to keep an indictee in detention for longer than 11 years without passing a verdict, Brammertz said that it had never been the tribunal's intention to have any trial last so long.

It is a fact that Šešelj has done nothing to make the trial easier and that he himself caused many postponements and interruptions in the proceedings, by making the names of protected witnesses public, which had the Trial Chamber find him guilty for contempt of court three times. However, these incidents alone cannot justify the delays. It is necessary that the Tribunal critically considers the flaws in this case, said the ICTY chief prosecutor.

When it comes to the work of The Hague-based tribunal, Brammertz said that the court should close in 2017.

He said that all the cases before the tribunal, except for the Šešelj's case, were going well, pointing out that a verdict was now pending in the case against former president of Republika Srpska (the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina) Radovan Karadzic.

The ICTY raised an indictment against Vojislav Šešelj on February 14, 2003, accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Serbian province of Vojvodina, where no armed...