Carla del Ponte’s former spokeswoman is charged with ‘knowingly and intentionally obstructing justice’ by making public the confidential information contrary to the Appeals Chamber decisions. The information pertains to the decisions granting confidential status to documents from the Supreme Defense Council that Belgrade handed over to the prosecution in the Slobodan Milosevic case


Florence Hartmann, former spokeswoman of the ICTY chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, was indicted today on charges of contempt of court for making public the information from confidential decisions of the Appeals Chamber in the case against Slobodan Milosevic. Hartmann was summoned to appear before the Tribunal at 3 p.m. on Monday, 15 September 2008 when she is expected to enter her plea on two counts in the indictment charging her of ‘knowingly and intentionally obstructing justice’ she committed by disclosing confidential information in contravention of orders issued by the Appeals Chamber.

The annex of the order signed by judge Carmel Agius specifies that Hartmann has published this confidential information on pages 120 to 122 of her book Peace and Punishment, and in an article entitled Vital Genocide Documents Concealed, published by the Bosnian Institute in London on 21 January 2008. The information pertains to the decisions of the Appeals Chamber to keep documents from the Supreme Defense Council under seal. Those documents were handed over to the prosecution in the Slobodan Milosevic case. In the article she wrote for the Bosnian Institute, Hartmann accuses the judges of keeping the Supreme Defense Council documents concealed from the public ‘with the sole purpose of shielding Serbia from responsibility before another UN court’, i.e., the International Court of Justice that was at the time hearing the case Bosnia Herzegovina brought against Serbia.

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