Šešelj and Hague’s "weak spot"

Šešelj and Hague’s "weak spot"

Judge Antonetti noted Wednesday that there are "two serious obstacles" for the start of the trial: the disclosure of evidence "on paper and in the language of the accused", and the financial status of Vojislav Šešelj's legal advisors.

The Appeals Chamber and the ICTY president have recently ruled on those two issues, dismissing Šešelj's appeals against the prosecution's practice to disclose evidence in electronic form and the Registry's decision to refuse to consider the expenses list furnished by the so-called expert team.

The team has so far charged US$ 6.4mn  for legal services rendered.

In both cases, the accused was instructed to raise those issues before the new Trial Chamber hearing its case, which includes judges Antonetti, Robinson and Bonomy.

Inviting Šešelj to file an application for the review of the decision on the format of disclosure, Judge Antonetti intimated today that he would grant the request of the accused for the material to be disclosed to him exclusively "on paper and in Serbian".

It is unclear whether the pre-trial judge will make the decision alone or whether the modification of the decision the trial Chamber had rendered last year would require the vote of at least one other judge, Robinson and/or Bonomy.

Agreeing with Šešelj that his three legal advisers and case manager had been granted "humiliatingly small funds", judge Antonetti promised he would make an effort to find a solution for the problem.

Although Šešelj has been saying he could hardly wait for the trial to start ever since his arrival in The Hague in February 2003, he now told the court he was ready to "wait patiently for four or even fourteen more years if necessary" for all the evidence to be "translated into Serbian and put on paper", because in his view, "the trial cannot start" if this is not done.

The material includes, in Šešelj's view, all the transcripts of the evidence of all the witnesses in all the trials conducted before the Tribunal so far who mentioned his name, even if they did so only once, and all the statements those witnesses gave to the prosecution, as well as the notes taken during their interviews with the investigators.

He said he didn’t care at all about the problems this would pose for the Tribunal's translation service.

"If 30 translators are not enough, let them employ 300 or 3,000, but everything must be on paper and in Serbian," Šešelj said, adding, "I've found your weak spot and I'm insisting on this. You've done nothing for four years and now you're running out of time".

Because the Tribunal is "running out of time", Olga Kavran, OTP spokesperson, was asked at the press briefing today whether any thought was given to the possibility of referring the Vojislav Šešelj case to the local courts: in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina or in Croatia.

Kavran said that this possibility had not been considered and that the Vojislav Šešelj case does not comply with the current criteria for the referral of the cases to local courts. Currently, only the cases involving the accused at "lower and medium levels" may be referred.

The OTP spokesperson did not want to speculate what would happen if the UN Security Council decided to change the criteria because the ICTY is running out of time, to allow the referral of cases involving the accused at higher levels of power and responsibility.