Seselj claims there is a ‘joint criminal enterprise’ of the prosecution in The Hague and Natasa Kandic. By doing this, he wants to challenge in advance the credibility of any future ‘insider’ witnesses, former ‘Seselj’s men’ who would dare to give evidence against


Vojislav Seselj today produced a thick criminal record of protected prosecution witness VS 033, showing that after the former SRS volunteer returned from the front lines in Western Slavonia in December 1991, he planted explosives in the yards of a mosque and a Roman Catholic church in Belgrade. He also planted explosives in front of homes and under the cars of several Kosovo Albanians living in Belgrade. The witness admitted to these crimes and in 1997 he was sentenced to three years. However, he never served his sentence because he remained ‘out of reach of the police’ until the statue of limitations expired on his sentence.

The disclosure of the criminal past of the witness VS 033 was Seselj’s secondary goal today. He aimed primarily at laying bare the ‘conspiracy’ or a ‘joint criminal enterprise’ of the OTP and Natasa Kandic, director of Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Center. By doing this, he wants to challenge in advance the credibility of any future ‘insider’ witnesses, former ‘Seselj’s men’ who would dare to give evidence against their former leader.

Seselj’s main weapon today was a statement by Aleksandar Gajic. According to Gajic, witness VS 033 told him last year that Natasa Kandic ‘had been giving him instructions and preparing him for the testimony’ against the Serbian Radicals’ leader for some time. He alleged that Natasa Kandic ‘hated Seselj pathologically and wanted to take her revenge on him’. Gajic alleged that last summer the witness took him to visit Natasa Kandic. She was ‘delighted’ when he introduced Gajic to her as a ‘potential witness’. Gajic, as he explained, ‘agreed to cooperate with her in order to collect evidence on her anti-Serbian activities’.

When Seselj read out parts of this statement to the witness, he replied that Gajic had actually introduced him to Natasa Kandic. He wondered what kind of pressure Gajic was under when he agreed to ‘write such lies’.

The pressure witness VS 033 faced after it became known in Serbia that he was going to testify against Seselj was discussed in closed session today, at the prosecution’s request. VS 033 testified for the most part in closed session about what he and other SRS volunteers were doing in Western Slavonia in late 1991. Seselj protested today against the fact that the trial was closed to public, claiming that the Registry was ‘censoring’ the trial.

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