Serbian Radical Party

The appeals chamber of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals on Monday dismissed an appeal filed by Serbia against its decision not to allow two members of the Serbian Radical Party accused of contempt of court to stand trial in Belgrade rather than at the UN court in The Hague.

Ultranationalist politician and war criminal Vojislav Seselj and members of his Serbian Radical Party on Wednesday evening physically forced anti-war activists out of a building in Belgrade's Stari Grad municipality where Seselj was promoting his new book denying that the Srebrenica massacres were genocide.

"The overall economic and legitimacy crisis after Tito's death in the 1980s created a favourable atmosphere for criticising the Partisan myth and creating positive images about their [the Partisans'] enemies [the Chetniks]," Djureinovic, who has a PhD in history from Justus Liebig University in Giessen and works with the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre, told BIRN in an interview.

Serbian Justice Minister Nela Kuburovic said on Friday that it was "hypocritical" of the UN court to say that witnesses did not dare to appear in court in Belgrade and that therefore the two Serbian Radical Party officials had to be tried in The Hague.

"Serbia has the right to appeal. It will refute the decision," Kuburovic said, Serbia's Happy TV station reported.

Serbian Radical Party MP Vjerica Radeta told BIRN that she and her party colleague Petar Jojic will not go to the The Hague voluntarily to face trial for contempt of court, despite the latest ruling by the UN's Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals.

One of the most respected journalists in Serbia, Dejan Anastasijevic, a longtime correspondent for Time magazine, Vreme, Tanjug, B92, the BBC and many others, has died in Belgrade after a long illness.

Born in 1962, Anastasijevic reported from the wars in the former Yugoslavia and wrote extensively about war crimes, earning the wrath of the Serbian authorities at the time.

Mirjana Markovic with her husband, Slobodan Milosevic, in 1997. Photo: Srdjan Suki/EPA.

The urn containing the ashes of Mirjana Markovic, widow of former Serbian and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, was buried next to her late husband in the garden of their family home in the eastern Serbian town of Pozarevac on Saturday.

The president of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals rejected a request from Serbian Radical Party leader Seselj to allow him to appeal against a second-instance verdict convicting him of persecuting Croats in Serbia in 1992.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals dismissed the Hague prosecutor’s challenge to its decision to hand over the contempt-of-court case against two Serbian Radical Party members to Belgrade.

The UN court in The Hague ruled that Serbian Radical Party leader Seselj cannot file an appeal against a second-instance verdict convicting him of the persecution of Croats in the Serbian village of Hrtkovci in 1992.