Vojislav Šešelj
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Vojislav Šešelj (11 October 1954) is a Serbian politician, founder and president of the Serbian Radical Party who served as Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia from 1998 - 2000. He was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 2003 for his activities in the White Eagles paramilitary group and involvement in the persecution of ethnic Croats during the Bosnian War and Croatian War of Independence. He was acquitted on all counts by the ICTY in 2016, but was eventually convicted on three counts of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was not obligated to serve this sentence due to credit for time served.
Biography edit
Šešelj was born in Sarajevo in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1954. He joined the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and became involved in student organizations, acting from a platform based on the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Mao. He began working at the University of of Belgrade.
In the early 1980s, Šešelj became more involved in Serbian nationalism and started to turn against his communist colleagues, accusing them of plagiarism, having Pan-Islamist sympathies and being supporters of Muammar al-Gaddafi. He became very concerned about the potential Muslim occupation of Yugoslavia and was also very critical of the communist regime. Because of this, he was arrested and imprisoned from 1984 - 1986, when he was released due to political pressure.
Šešelj became involved in politics after his release, regularly calling for a genocide against Croats in order to create a Serbian homeland. He formed the Serbian Radical Party in 1991, in a merger between two far-right parties. He was also known to be associated with the White Eagles paramilitary group that was active during the Yugoslav Wars, with a unit of the group being named after him. This unit was linked to some of the most violent aspects of the ethnic cleansing against Croats during the Yugoslav Wars, including the Voćin massacre and the Višegrad massacre. Šešelj helped to incite this campaign through hate speech denouncing Croats as a genocidal and perverted people. He was appointed Deputy Prime Minister to Slobodan Milošević in 1998, but eventually lost power when Milošević's government was voted out in 2003.
On 14 February 2003, the ICTY indicted Šešelj for war crimes and crimes against humanity due to his part in the persecution of Croats. Šešelj surrendered on 23 February and was transferred to the Hague to face trial. He was held in contempt in 2005 for telling the judge that he only had the right to perform oral sex on him. In 2006 he went in a 28-day hunger strike, leading to protests lead by Radical Party secretary Aleksandar Vučić calling for his release.
On 24 July 2009, Šešelj was given a 15-month sentence for contempt after publicly naming three anonymous witnesses in a book. After several more years in detention, he was eventually acquitted on all charges on 31 March 2016. However, the verdict was appealed by the prosecution. The Appeal Chamber found Šešelj guilty on three counts of crimes against humanity relating to speeches by Šešelj that incited violence and forcible transfer against Croats and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. As he had been in ICTY custody for over 15 years, he was given credit for time served and was permitted to return to Serbia without serving his sentence.