Seselj Witness Convicted of Contempt

Hague tribunal judges this week found Ljubisa Petkovic guilty of contempt of the tribunal for refusing to testify in the trial of Serbian ultranationalist leader Vojislav Seselj.



Petkovic, former head of the war staff of Seselj’s Serb Radical Party, SRS, was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment.



While Petkovic was supposed to be a protected witness for the prosecution in the Seselj trial, he failed to respond to two subpoenas to testify in this case. He was called to appear in court as a prosecution witness on January 8 this year and as a trial chamber witness on May 13, yet failed to show on either occasion.



Under the tribunal's rules, a trial chamber may summon witnesses and order their attendance.



At his trial held last week, Petkovic claimed he was exposed to “pressure, intimidation and blackmail” by tribunal prosecutors and cited this as the main reason why he decided not to testify as a prosecution witness, but as a witness for the defence instead.



Delivering the judgement on September 11, presiding judge Jean-Claude Antonetti underlined the gravity of the offence committed by Petkovic.



He dismissed Petkovic’s reasons for failing to attend, pointing out that on the second occasion, he had been called as a trial chamber, rather than a prosecution witness.



“When ordered to appear as a trial chamber witness … the accused could not refuse to comply with the subpoena, stating that he was a ‘defence witness’,” said Judge Antonetti.



“In that regard, the trial chamber wishes to recall that witnesses are not the property of the parties and that when the trial chamber decides, by way of subpoena, that their testimony is necessary for the establishment of the truth, they have to comply with it.”



Judges also dismissed the argument put forward by the defence in which it claimed it was not clear to the accused that the subpoena was addressed to him, and that his state of health prevented him from informing the chamber that he could not comply with the court’s order.



“First…the Accused could not reasonably doubt that he was the addressee of the Subpoena. Second, though psychologically fragile, the Accused was not in a state of health which prevented him from informing the Trial Chamber that he could not comply with the Subpoena,” concluded the judges.





Merdijana Sadovic is IWPR’s Hague tribunal manager.