UN judges acquitted Serbian nationalist firebrand Vojislav Seselj of war crimes and crimes against humanity on Thursday, a shock verdict that delivered a boost to his anti-EU Serbian Radical Party ahead of April elections. War victims reacted with dismay to the acquittal of Seselj, who was accused of stoking murderous ethnic hatred with fiery rhetoric in the 1990s wars that accompanied federal Yugoslavia's break-up into seven successor states and killed 130,000 people.
Croatia banned Seselj from entering the country after Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic labelled the verdict "shameful" during a visit to Vukovar, scene of some of the alleged atrocities, where he laid wreaths in memory of war dead. On one occasion, Seselj gave a speech to Serbian troops, telling them: "Not a single Ustasha must leave Vukovar alive," using a derogatory term for Croats in 1991 in the eastern Croatian city on the Danube River border with Serbia. But the UN tribunal ruled that this did not amount to incitement.
It could not be ruled out that such speeches were made "in a context of conflict and were meant to boost the morale of the troops of his camp, rather than calling upon them to spare no one," said Judge Jean-Claude Antonetti, who headed a three-judge panel that voted 2-1 in favour of acquittal. At Radical Party headquarters in Belgrade, Seselj's supporters cheered the stunning outcome at the UN tribunal - Seselj himself had expected a 25-year sentence.
Polls show his party hovering just above the 5 percent threshold it would need to return to parliament next month after four years outside. Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic reacted with "disbelief" to the acquittal, while war victim Vesna Bosanac, head of a Vukovar hospital that was besieged by pro-Seselj militia in 1991, said she was "speechless... The only thing that awaits him is the judgement of God." Munira Subasic, who lost her husband and son in the 1995 Serb massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, said the tribunal had rewarded "an ideology of persecution and war crimes".
In a scathing and unusually strong dissent over the acquittal, one of the three judges said Seselj and his allies outside the courtroom had intimidated prosecution witnesses. "The majority sets aside all the rules of international humanitarian law," Flavia Lattanzi wrote.
But a case that hinged on demonstrating the harm caused by hot-headed rhetoric was never going to be easy, said Nancy Combs, law professor at the College of William and Mary in the United States. "How do we link these awful pronouncements to the facts on the ground?" she asked. "It's pretty clear, though, that a reasonable trial chamber could have come to the opposite conclusion."
Thursday's verdict ramps up the pressure on the right-wing government of Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, once an ally of Seselj who dropped his nationalism in favour of a policy of seeking Serbia's admission to the European Union. The government is walking a tightrope at a time of growing Russian influence in south-eastern Europe and risks losing votes to Seselj's camp if it is seen as too accommodating of the EU-backed ICTY, which has prosecuted mainly Serbs.
Seselj, 61, is a prolific writer known for his pugnacious temper and was a close ally of late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in his UN tribunal cell in The Hague a decade ago before his war crimes trial could be completed. Seselj has never abandoned his ideal of a "Greater Serbia" incorporating parts of Croatia and Bosnia that Serb nationalist forces fought for after Yugoslavia's federal republics split away, and his message could yet tempt back Vucic supporters.
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