Warrant Issued for Ex-Spokesperson's Arrest
Move comes because Florence Hartmann has not paid court-ordered fine.
Warrant Issued for Ex-Spokesperson's Arrest
Move comes because Florence Hartmann has not paid court-ordered fine.
A warrant was issued this week for the arrest of Florence Hartmann, the former spokesperson for the Hague tribunal’s chief prosecutor, for failing to pay a fine imposed for a contempt-of-court conviction.
The 7,000 euro fine has now been changed to a seven-day prison sentence.
Hartmann, a French national who worked at the he International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, from 2000 to 2006, was convicted of two counts of contempt in 2009 for revealing confidential information pertaining to two decisions that the tribunal’s appeals chamber issued in 2005 and 2006 during the trial of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.
She disclosed the confidential information in her 2007 book, Peace and Punishment, and in an article, “Vital Genocide Documents Concealed”, which was published on the Bosnian Institute website in January, 2008.
The conviction and the fine of 7,000 euro were upheld on appeal earlier this year.
Last month, the then tribunal president, Judge Patrick Robinson, ordered Hartmann to pay the fine, which he indicated should have been delivered in two installments of 3,500 euro each on August 19 and September 19 this year.
The judge said Hartmann sent him a letter on August 16, and again on September 19, stating that she did have the money to pay the fine, but that her “supporters” had deposited the funds into a French bank account, details of which she provided.
The tribunal’s registry, however, has a specific process that must be followed when it comes to the payment of fines. Judge Robinson thus ordered Hartmann to pay the fine “in the exact manner prescribed by the registry” no later than October 25.
In the November 16 arrest warrant, appeals judges noted that this had not been done, and that Hartmann had instead sent a letter on October 20 in which she “reiterated the points” she had made previously.
“The French Republic is directed and authorised to search for, arrest, detain, and surrender [Hartmann] promptly to the tribunal,” the judges wrote in the warrant.
Two days earlier, on November 14, Hartmann sent another letter to Judge Robinson stating that she had asked the two lawyers representing her at the tribunal, Karim Khan and Guenael Mettraux, to resign from her case, and that they no longer had permission to act on her behalf.
She stated yet again that she had provided information to the tribunal regarding the bank account where funds had been deposited on her behalf so that court “could enforce its appeal judgement should it decide to do so”.
“I would also like to take this opportunity to formally request the lifting of the confidential status of all confidential documents on the record in my case,” Hartmann said in the letter, which the tribunal released publicly. “This measure is necessary so that I may request and obtain an appeal and satisfaction from the relevant organs for the violations of my rights committed throughout the proceedings before the ICTY,” she continued.
At a press conference this week, court spokesperson Nerma Jelacic declined to elaborate on details of the case or on Hartmann’s current whereabouts, although she did say it was “premature” to say the tribunal had “another fugitive on its hands,” as one journalist had suggested.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
