Who is seselj

In , he was convicted of making nationalist statements and served two years in prison before moving to Belgrade, where he began integrating himself into Serbian nationalist circles which were against the Yugoslav communist regime. He started to gravitate towards the ideas of the Chetniks, the World War II monarchist movement whose leader Draza Mihajlovic was executed by the Communists.

Chetnik groups were banned under Communist rule because of their WWII-era collaboration with Nazi Germany, but in , as the one-party system disintegrated, Seselj founded his own Serbian Chetnik Movement.

This led to his second prison term in , when he was convicted of trying to damage the House of Flowers, where longtime Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito is buried.

Although he only won around 90, votes, it catapulted him into a prominent position on the Serbian political scene.

During the wars, he became well-known for his extreme rhetoric, which he used to mobilise Serbs across the region. He publicly advocated creating individual mono-ethnic areas through ethnic cleansing. In January , the Hague Tribunal filed an indictment, accusing Seselj of the deportation of tens of thousands of non-Serbs and murder of at least Bosniaks and Croats. The trial began in November following a series of delays, including a hunger strike by Seselj in protest having a defence lawyer imposed by the court.

He refused legal help from the UN-backed tribunal and mocked the offer of a court-appointed lawyer. He will never be my defence lawyer. You brought actors here to act as my defence lawyers, but they will never be my defence lawyers.

The presiding judge Theodor Meron told the court that Seselj, a close ally of then Serbian autocratic leader Slobodan Milosevic, was guilty "of instigating persecution, deportation and other inhumane acts". The tribunal ruled that a single speech by the academic turned far-right leader to Serb crowds in May had sparked atrocities against ethnic Croats in part of the Vojvodina province.

Seselj, Serbia's deputy prime minister between and , elected to represent himself legally but refused to attend the court in The Hague. He returned to Serbia in to undergo treatment for colon cancer. In , the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia acquitted Seselj of all charges against him, including murder and allegedly stoking ethnic hatred at the start of the wars that broke apart the Yugoslav federation.

While prosecutors appealed against his acquittal, Seselj was elected as a member of parliament in Serbia. It is also the first conviction for war crimes committed in Serbia, and the first conviction by an international tribunal for inciting crimes using speeches in the former Yugoslavia. Denis Dzidic. Published by BIRN. This website was created and maintained with the financial support of the European Union.