Seselj Denied Defence Funding
Serbian nationalist politician fails to provide proof that he has insufficient means to fund his legal team.
Seselj Denied Defence Funding
Serbian nationalist politician fails to provide proof that he has insufficient means to fund his legal team.
The Hague tribunal has officially rejected Serbian nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj’s demand for defence team funding, ending a nearly-seven-year battle.
Since he was arrested in 2003, Seselj, a lawyer by training, has insisted on representing himself and even went on hunger strike in 2006 when judges tried to assign him counsel. He has also insisted, since the time of his arrest, that the court fund additional members of his defence team.
However, according to a decision issued by deputy registrar Ken Roberts this week, Seselj has consistently failed to provide proof that “he does not have sufficient means to pay for his defence”, despite repeated requests over the years for him to do so.
Instead, Seselj insisted that the registry “had all the information it needed to assess his financial status since it had checked the information provided by him with the Serbian authorities”.
The registrar sent Seselj a letter on June 25, again warning him to provide the requested information.
Roberts also noted in the letter that the presiding judge on Seselj’s case, Jean-Claude Antontetti, said in a June 14 hearing that the registrar “has, in its hands, all of the elements it is asking the accused to provide”.
“The registrar respectfully submits that is not the case,” wrote Roberts.
In this week’s decision, Roberts noted “the accused’s long history of non-compliance with registry requests regarding his financial status, and the registry’s consequent inability to make an indigency determination”.
Seselj is charged with nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity – including murder, torture and forcible transfer – for atrocities carried out in an effort to expel the non-Serb population from parts of Croatia and Bosnia between August 1991 and September 1993. He remains leader of the Serbian Radical Party, SRS, based in Belgrade.
Seselj was found guilty of contempt in July 2009 for revealing confidential details about protected witnesses in one of the books he authored.
The accused is set to face another contempt trial for revealing details about 11 protected witnesses in one of his books. Those proceedings have yet to take place because Seselj is requesting that two of the judges be removed from the case.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
