VOJISLAV SESELJ - DAY 11: MR. NICE SLITS HIS OWN THROAT
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - September 14, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

Geoffrey Nice continued to cross-examine Vojislav Seselj at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Wednesday. Mr. Nice continued to put parts of speeches and documents to Dr. Seselj and the witness continued to accuse the prosecutor of taking things out of context.

Mr. Nice continued insulting Seselj, today he called him "an evil man," and Seselj responded in kind by accusing the prosecutor of being "a liar." Mr. Nice claims that Milosevic "allowed" Seselj to make statements which caused hatred and therefore incited violence, a charge with the witness denied.

Mr. Nice's strategy is interesting. First he accuses Milosevic of running a police state, then he accuses Milosevic for "allowing" opposition politicians to make speeches. On top of that several of the speeches Mr. Nice cited weren't even made in Serbia - how was Milosevic, as the president of Serbia, supposed to do anything about that?

Mr. Nice focused nearly all of his cross-examination on Seselj's public statements during the mid-1990s. During the mid-1990s Milosevic and Seselj were engaged in a bitter political conflict. Seselj vehemently opposed Milosevic's cooperation with the international community with regard to the peace process, and he believed that the Serbian DB was engaged in a clandestine scheme to undermine the Serbian Radical Party.

During that time of conflict, Seselj made several statements accusing Milosevic of everything from arms trafficking to theft. He now claims that those statements were untrue. He testified that he made untrue statements, which he says were often nothing more than a rehash of the accusations leveled against Milosevic by the Western media, in order to damage Milosevic politically. Seselj warned Mr. Nice that if he was basing the indictment on his public statements, then it would collapse like a house of cards.

Judge Robinson said that Seselj’s admission that he made untrue statements for political propaganda undermines his credibility. By calling Seselj's credibility in to question the Judges and the prosecution have painted themselves into a corner. Seselj said that he repeated the accusations of the Western media against Milosevic. If Seselj were portrayed as a credible source of information, then the tribunal could have at least attempted to use those public statements against Milosevic. Now, because they have called his credibility in to question, they can't rely on anything he said. They can't use any of his statements against Milosevic because they say he lacks credibility.

Seselj's alleged credibility problems don't cost Milosevic very much anyway because the nature of his testimony is mainly cumulative, nearly every important fact that he testified to has already been testified to by previous witnesses. For the most part he simply corroborated facts.

The only one likely to come out of this whole episode with damaged credibility is Mr. Nice. Seselj frequently accused the prosecutor of reading misleading and overly selective quotations from documents, and taking his speeches out of context. When Milosevic re-examines Seselj we will see what the documents say, we will see what his speeches were about, and then we can see just what sort of cross-examination Mr. Nice has been running.

For his part Seselj doesn't care what the ICTY judges think. He is content to be judged by the public and judged by history. He informed the tribunal that its so-called "judgments" are not above public scrutiny. That statement is absolutely true. The ICTY's verdicts only have as much meaning as the public gives them. The ICTY is a political institution and if the public doesn't consider the its judgments to be worth the paper they're printed on, then the tribunal is totally powerless.

Mr. Nice is expected to complete Seselj's cross-examination by the end of tomorrow's hearing.

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