A special U.N. court on Thursday found Serb nationalist Vojislav Seselj not guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, ruling that he’s not personally responsible for atrocities committed in the 1990s by Bosnian Serb forces.
Indicted in 2003, Seselj faced three counts of crimes against humanity (for persecution on political, racial or religious grounds) and six more for war crimes (including murder, torture and destruction of institutions dedicated to religion or education).
Among other things, he advocated for uniting “all Serbian lands” — including Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina — in a single Serbian state referred to as “Greater Serbia.”
The majority on the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found that “the objective of the creation of Greater Serbia was more of a political venture than a criminal project.”
The ruling said Seselj may have recruited volunteers to the cause, but “once … sent to the front, (these recruits) were not under (his) authority … but rather under military command.”
Croatian Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic criticized the verdict, saying it amounted to a “defeat” for the prosecution and a “disgrace” for the U.N. tribunal, according to his spokeswoman, Dubravka Belas.
Oreskovic told reporters that Seselj had committed evils yet never showed remorse. He called on Serbia’s government to act against him, even if the U.N. court did not.
“We hope to see the right decisions and the right conduct by our neighbor,” Oreskovic said, according to Belas.
The prosecutor’s office that brought the case noted that three of Seselj’s associates — including two members of his defense team — have been accused of threatening, trying to bribe and intimidating two prosecution witnesses. According to the prosecutor’s office, Seselj has already gotten a four-year, nine-month sentence after being convicted of contempt of court for revealing the identities of protected witnesses.
And his legal fight on war crimes charges isn’t necessarily over.
“We will carefully review the (court’s) reasoning that led to this outcome,” the prosecutor’s office said. “We will then determine whether there are grounds to appeal the judgment.”
Years of ‘ethnic cleansing’
The bloodshed began in 1992 when Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia, which had formed in the aftermath of World War I.
Bosnian Serbs laid siege to Sarajevo and carried out what was later described as “ethnic cleansing,” namely of Muslims, in areas of under Serbian control.
By the time the Dayton peace accord ended the conflict three years later, more than half of the 4.2 million who’d lived in what’s now Bosnia-Herzegovina had been displaced, more 100,000 had been killed or gone missing, and most of the local infrastructure and economy was in a shambles, according to the United Nations.
The special court based in The Hague, Netherlands, has tried key figures in the Bosnian War.
Radislav Krstic, a former Bosnian Serb general, received a 46-year sentence in 2001 after being found guilty on eight counts — two of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and one of violations of the laws or customs of war.
In 2013, six former top Bosnian Croat leaders were convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The Seselj ruling comes a week after the same court reached a starkly different conclusion in the case of Radovan Karadzic.
Nicknamed the “Butcher of Bosnia,” Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison after being found guilty of genocide and other crimes against humanity over atrocities that Bosnian Serb forces committed during the war from 1992 to 1995.