Serb nationalist sentenced

Vojislav Seselj is currently on trial at the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for alleged war crimes committed in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia between 1991 and 1994.

On Friday, Seselj received a 15-month contempt of court sentence for leaking the names of protected witnesses who are to testify against him in his trial. The case has been pending since January.

The former leader of the Serbian Radical Party disclosed the names of the witnesses and their pseudonyms on his internet site and in a book published in 2007. The judges said this constituted "a serious interference with the administration of justice" and ordered him to remove both from his website by August 7.

Seselj surrendered to the ICTY in late February 2003. He is charged with 15 counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, including the persecution of Croat, Muslim and other non-Serbs, and other charges including murder, forced deportation, illegal imprisonment, torture and property destruction during the Yugoslav war.

Seselj has made repeated headlines for his contempt of court and for a book in which he called former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana a felon and war criminal. In December 2006 he went on a 28-day hunger strike after the court denied him the right to choose his own defense council. In January 2007 he led his party's list of contenders in the general election - despite being in custody in The Hague.

Seselj's trial was suspended on February 11, 2009 after the prosecution alleged that witnesses were being intimidated and said there were concerns about the safety of the 10 remaining witnesses to be heard.

Seselj has insisted that he had not intended this when he published the witnesses' names.

kj/afp/dpa
Editor: Susan Houlton