UN judges 'failed' by acquitting radical Serb

UN prosecutors Wednesday sought to overturn the surprise acquittal of ultranationalist Serbian politician Vojislav Seselj on war crimes charges, arguing last year's ruling had been deeply flawed.

"Your Honours, justice has not been done in the case against Vojislav Seselj," said prosecutor Mathias Marcussen, adding his office had "identified numerous errors" in the 2016 ruling which found Seselj not guilty on nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Seselj himself snubbed the appeal hearing, which comes after several recent blows for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and its work to prosecute those behind the atrocities of the 1990s Balkans wars.

The setbacks included the dramatic suicide of former Bosnian Croat military commander Slobodan Praljak, who swallowed cyanide in the courtroom in late November just after judges upheld his 20-year jail term for war crimes.

Just a week earlier, Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic had to be dragged from the court during an angry outburst as he was jailed for life for genocide, among other charges.

The "stunning" judgement against Seselj "must be quashed. Letting it stand is not only an affront to the victims," said Marcussen.

It will also "undermine the credibility of both the ICTY" and its successor, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT), he told the five appeals judges on Wednesday.

Set up in 1993, the ICTY has successfully prosecuted dozens of those responsible for the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II. But hopes of bringing reconciliation to the bitterly divided region remain distant.

- 'Theatre of the absurd' -

In a sign of lasting tensions, about 2,000 people packed a public memorial in Zagreb on Monday to honour Praljak as a hero.

"No one can compare to a great man like Slobodan," said Miroslav Tudjman, an MP of Croatia's conservative HDZ party and son of late Croatian nationalist Franjo Tudjman.

He slammed the UN judges as "incompetent and irresponsible" and said the court is "a parody, a theatre of the absurd".

Seselj, 63, now a member of the Serbian parliament with his Serbian Radical Party, hailed his acquittal and has done little to hide his own contempt for the tribunal.

"I have nothing to do with the court in The Hague," he told AFP in Belgrade before Wednesday's hearing.

"Since I was acquitted in the first instance, I do not see what is left for this mechanism, what it can do with my verdict," added Seselj, now a member of the Serbian parliament with his Serbian Radical Party.

Prosecutors insist Seselj was behind the murders of many Croats, Muslims and other non-Serb civilians in an unrelenting quest to create a "Greater Serbia".

In their majority ruling in March 2016, the judges said the prosecution had failed to prove "there was a widespread systematic attack against the non-Serb civilian population in large areas of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina."

- 'Vast evidence of crimes' -

But on Wednesday, the prosecution hit back that this was a "stunning finding" which was "at odds with dozens of other judgements rendered at the ICTY."

"The majority failed to consider the vast body of evidence" of crimes committed in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia, Marcussen said.

Experts also said last year that the judgement by the trial chamber had overturned international law and rewritten the history of the Balkan conflicts, triggered as Yugoslavia broke apart in 1991 following the fall of communism.

The court's chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz has insisted that "in large measure, the ICTY has achieved what it set out to do" by investigating crimes and prosecuting top officials.

He agreed at a Washington think-tank talk on Tuesday that reconciliation remained elusive, but said the tribunal's legacy would not be measured by its own work but by "whether the countries of the former Yugoslavia build the rule of law".

Balkan countries must "demonstrate that they can secure meaningful justice for the victims and show the courage to accept facts and pursue meaningful reconciliation".

A ruling in the Seselj appeal is due in early 2018.