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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