Enlarge imageBy Nicola Leske
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Serbian ultranationalist leader Vojislav Seselj refused to appear for the start of his trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal on Monday and permanently lost his right to defend himself.
Seselj faces charges of persecution, extermination, murder and torture of Croats, Bosnian Muslims and other non-Serbs, and is accused of plotting crimes with former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in March while still on trial.
Seselj, who is on a hunger strike to demand he is allowed to represent himself, said he would not appear in court on Monday despite warnings from the judges that they would revoke his right to self-defence if he continued to disrupt proceedings.
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"He persists in not taking food ... he persists in being absent," presiding judge Alphons Orie said in court.
"The court finds that the accused’s self-representation has essentially obstructed the proper and expeditious proceedings," he said, instructing standby defence lawyers to take over.
Seselj, 52, was banned from representing himself in August after disrupting pre-trial hearings but the tribunal’s appeals chamber later restored his right to self-defence while assigning a standby-counsel should Seselj obstruct proceedings again.
Milosevic also had defence lawyers imposed on him after his ill health repeatedly delayed his trial. His right to represent himself was restored on appeal and he had almost finished his defence when he died of a heart attack in his cell.
REFUSED TO COOPERATE
Seselj, who surrendered to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague in 2003, has refused to cooperate with the court-assigned defence lawyers, calling them spies.
He began his hunger strike more than two weeks ago demanding free choice of legal counsel, the unconditional right to defend himself and unrestricted visits by his wife.
Seselj, who has pleaded innocent to the charges against him, is still refusing food and medication but is drinking water, the registry said on Monday.
"The absence of the accused is caused ... by a self-induced weak physical condition and cannot be accepted by the chamber as a reason to postpone this trial," Orie said.
Despite the trial, Seselj is the principal candidate of the Serbian Radical Party in a parliamentary election in January. Critics have said his hunger strike is an attempt to help the ratings of his party, currently topping opinion polls.
Prosecution lawyer Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff called Seselj in her opening statement "a shrewd and calculating man" and "a master of political manipulation".
"He pursued the goal of a new homogeneous Serbian state through a massive state-sponsored persecution campaign that included killing, detention, plunder, razing of entire villages," Uertz-Retzlaff said.
Seselj’s supporters say he has already had to wait too long for his trial and accuse the U.N. court -- which was set up in 1993 to try crimes committed during the 1990s Balkan wars -- of bias against Serbs.
