Vojislav Šešelj

Vojislav Šešelj (Serbian Cyrillic: Војислав Шешељ, ) (born 11 October 1954) is a Serbian politician, writer and lawyer. He is the founder and president of the Serbian Radical Party. He was a member of the Serbian Parliament.

He is on trial for alleged war crimes and is suspected of being involved in crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He surrendered voluntarily in February 2003 but his trial did not begin until November 2007. In February 2009, the prosecution presented 71 witnesses against Šešelj. With seven hours left in the prosecution, his trial was suspended due to claims of alleged witness intimidation. The trial resumed on 12 January 2009, and Šešelj stated that there was no need to call any witnesses in his defense since the prosecution had not presented a single worthy witness. On 24 July 2009, he was sentenced to a further 15 months in custody for disrespecting the court.

As of April 2012, the trial was still under way and Šešelj had spent more than nine years in custody. Of all ICTY indictees, Šešelj spent the longest time without a verdict being delivered. This is partly due to a hunger strike, his decision to not appear for his opening statement (he was self represented), and the aforementioned witness intimidation. In September 2011, the ICTY rejected Šešelj’s bid to have his long-running trial discontinued. In his submission to the court, Šešelj stated that his right to be tried in a reasonable amount of time has been violated, and called the current situation “incomprehensible, scandalous and inappropriate”. However, the bench found that “there is no predetermined threshold with regard to the time period beyond which a trial may be considered unfair on account of undue delay” and also argued that Šešelj “failed to provide concrete proof of abuse of process”.