Turkey- Hague Tribunal demands updates on Serbian radicals' arrests

(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia ICTY told the Serbian authorities on Wednesday to file regular updates about its progress in arresting Serbian Radical Party officials Vjerica Radeta Petar Jojic and Jovo Ostojic.

Radeta Jojic and Ostojic are accused of threatening two protected witnesses at their leader Vojislav Seselj’s war crimes trial.

They are also accused of blackmailing the protected witnesses and offered them bribes of 500 euros in order not to testify at Seselj’s trial for alleged wartime crimes in Bosnia Croatia and Serbia.

The ICTY ordered Belgrade “to submit monthly reports to the chamber outlining its efforts with regard to executing the arrest warrants with the first report being due on 1 February 2016”.

The contempt indictments against the three Serbian Radical Party officials were raised confidentially on December 5 2014 while the warrants for their arrests were issued in secret on January 19 2015. Redacted versions were only made public in the beginning of December last year.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said on Thursday that Belgrade will comply with the ICTY’s request.

“They asked for the report. They will get the report” Vucic told a press conference.

The head of the Serbian office for cooperation with the Hague Tribunal Rasim Ljajic said in December that the publishing of the indictments was “surprising and unexpected”.

“We expected that Vojislav Seselj’s verdict would [be handed down] over the course of this year and that most logical thing would be to try these people for contempt of court at the same time as the verdict on Seselj is rendered” Ljajic said in a statement.

Seselj is still waiting for the exact date of his first-instance verdict after several controversial delays.

He returned to Belgrade after being granted temporary release on humanitarian grounds in November 2014 to undergo cancer treatment.

According to Serbia’s Law on Cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Belgrade is not obliged to comply with all the Hague court’s requests.

The government can deny any request if it believes that it violates Serbia’s sovereignty or national security.

One of the accused Radical Party officials Vjerica Radeta told media she would never go to the Hague court voluntarily.

This is not the first case of contempt of court during the ICTY’s 20-year history.

The most famous was against the UN court’s former spokesperson Florence Hartmann who was fined 7000 Euros in 2011 for disclosing evidence from a trial.

Seselj was also convicted three times of contempt of court.

The Radical Party chief is still in Serbia waiting for the ICTY to deliver his verdict in 2016.

Although the UN court has asked for him to return to detention in The Hague the Serbian authorities haven’t arrested him citing his poor health as a reason.

Since returning to Belgrade in 2014 Seselj has led nationalist protests and made a series of hardline statements that have angered war victims.

He had been in custody since 2003 when he voluntarily surrendered.