Croatian Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic criticized the verdict, saying it amounted to a “defeat” for the prosecution and a “disgrace” for the U.N. tribunal, according to his spokeswoman, Dubravka Belas.
Oreskovic told reporters that Seselj had committed evils yet never showed remorse. He called on Serbia’s government to act against him, even if the U.N. court did not.
“We hope to see the right decisions and the right conduct by our neighbor,” Oreskovic said, according to Belas.
Years of ‘ethnic cleansing’
The bloodshed began in 1992 when Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia, which had formed in the aftermath of World War I.
Bosnian Serbs laid siege to Sarajevo and carried out what was later described as “ethnic cleansing,” namely of Muslims, in areas of under Serbian control.
By the time the
Dayton peace accord ended the conflict three years later, more than half of the 4.2 million who’d lived in what’s now Bosnia-Herzegovina had been displaced, more 100,000 had been killed or gone missing, and most of the local infrastructure and economy was in a shambles,
according to the United Nations.
The special court based in The Hague, Netherlands, has tried key figures in the Bosnian War.
Radislav Krstic, a former Bosnian Serb general, received
a 46-year sentence in 2001 after being found guilty on eight counts — two of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and one of violations of the laws or customs of war.
In 2013,
six former top Bosnian Croat leaders were convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The Seselj ruling comes a week after the same court reached a starkly different conclusion in the case of
Radovan Karadzic.
Nicknamed the “Butcher of Bosnia,”
Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison after being found guilty of genocide and other crimes against humanity over atrocities that Bosnian Serb forces committed during the war from 1992 to 1995.
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Serb Vojislav Seselj acquitted of war crimes charges #JHedzWorlD
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