The Hague war crimes tribunal this week rejected Serbian nationalist Vojislav Seselj’s demand that a news agency be ordered to stop publishing “false trial reports”.
In a March 22 letter to Seselj, deputy registrar Ken Roberts wrote that the court “has no authority over external media entities”.
Roberts said the court’s media office and outreach programme offer assistance to journalists, but that they “neither take into account whether the reporting … on the work of the tribunal is positive or negative, nor take responsibility for such reports”.
Late last month, Seselj filed a motion claiming that the SENSE-Tribunal news agency, which publishes daily reports in English and in the local languages on its website, inaccurately reported information from a February 17 trial hearing.
Seselj said that SENSE had published the wrong date of a speech and mischaracterised other statements made during the hearing.
He asked the court to “intervene in order that agency SENSE-Tribunal desist from publishing false trial reports”.
“Publishing untruthful information violates [my] rights which are guaranteed by … the [tribunal] statute,” Seselj wrote.
He also said that SENSE “uses money intended for the [tribunal] that comes from the [court’s] outreach programme”.
In his letter to Seselj, Roberts denied this accusation.
“Please note that contrary to your allegations, SENSE is not financed by the tribunal or its outreach programme,” he wrote.
Roberts concluded by reiterating that the court’s registry “has no authority to intervene with SENSE” but he said Seselj was free to pursue the matter with SENSE himself if he wished.
Seselj represents himself and remains the leader of the Serbian Radical Party, SRS, based in Belgrade.
He is charged with nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity – including murder, torture and forcible transfer - for atrocities carried out between August 1991 and September 1993, in an effort to expel the non-Serb population from parts of Croatia and Bosnia.
Last July, Seselj was sentenced to 15 months in prison for revealing details about protected witnesses in one of his books. He is appealing against that conviction, but is currently facing new contempt charges for allegedly disclosing information about 11 protected witnesses.
Seselj will make his initial appearance in the second contempt case on April 20.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
