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Hague judge takes over Serb witness tampering case
THE HAGUE, May 14, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A UN judge on Tuesday took over a
witness tampering case involving lawyers for radical Serb nationalist
Vojislav Seselj, who was convicted of crimes against humanity, saying
witnesses feared for their lives if the case goes to trial in Belgrade.
Their case has dragged on for more than four years, with Serbia refusing
to arrest and extradite the defence lawyers Petar Jojic and Vjerica Radeta.
The pair was first charged in December 2014 with “having threatened,
intimidated, offered bribes to, or otherwise interfered with two witnesses”
in two cases involving Seselj.
After failed efforts to bring them to the Hague, in June 2018, the
Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) referred their case to
Serbia for its national courts to deal with.
But judge Liu Daqun on Tuesday revoked the referral, ordering Serbia to
send the two lawyers to The Hague “without delay” and issuing fresh
international arrest warrants for the pair.
“The witnesses are not willing to disclose their personal information to
Serbian authorities for fear of their life,” Daqun said in a written order.
The witnesses “unequivocally confirm their unwillingness to testify should
the case proceed to trial in Serbia”, which would “frustrate the
proceedings”, the judge added.
The two lawyers now serve as deputies in Seselj’s far-right Serbian
Radical Party in the national assembly in Belgrade.
Responding to the Hague’s order, Radeta, 63, told AFP she would “not go
there voluntarily”.
“As far as I am concerned, nothing has changed,” she said, adding she did
not expect the government to comply with the order based on a national law
that permits Serbia to deny some extradition requests.
The now-defunct International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY) — which the MICT has taken over from — issued arrest warrants
against Jojic and Radeta in January 2015 and the case has dragged on ever
since.
In April 2018, UN judges sentenced Seselj to 10 years in prison over
crimes against humanity, but he remained free because of the time he had
already served in detention.
The Serb nationalist was convicted of instigating persecution, deportation
and other inhuman acts over an anti-Croat speech delivered in the early 1990s
as the region descended into civil war.
BSS/AFP/RY/1754 hrs