Vojislav Šešelj

Vojislav Šešelj (Serbian Cyrillic: Војислав Шешељ, pronounced [ʋǒjislaʋ ʃěʃeʎ]; born 11 October 1954) is a Serbian politician and convicted war criminal. He is the founder and president of the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS). Between 1998 and 2000, he was a deputy prime minister of Serbia.

He surrendered to the ICTY in February 2003, but his trial did not begin until November 2007. Šešelj's trial was marred by controversy: he went on a hunger strike for nearly a month until finally being allowed to represent himself, regularly insulted the judges and court prosecutors once proceedings commenced, disclosed the identities of protected witnesses and was penalised on three occasions for disrespecting the court. He did not call any witnesses in his defence.

After spending 11 years and 9 months in detention in the United Nations Detention Unit of Scheveningen during his trial, Šešelj was permitted to temporarily return to Serbia in November 2014 to undergo cancer treatment. He led the SRS in the 2016 elections, and his party won 23 seats in the parliament.

On 31 March 2016, he was acquitted in a first-instance verdict on all counts by the ICTY. The acquittal was appealed by prosecutors from the MICT, a United Nations Security Council agency which functions as oversight program of, and successor entity to, the ICTY. On 11 April 2018, the Appeals Chamber partially reversed the first-instance verdict, finding Šešelj guilty of crimes against humanity for his role in instigating the deportation of Croats from Hrtkovci. He was found not guilty on the remaining counts of his indictment, including all the war crimes and crimes against humanity that he was alleged to have committed in Croatia and Bosnia. Šešelj was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but because of time already spent in ICTY custody, he was not obligated to return to prison. In August 2018 Šešelj appealed the conviction to the MICT Appeals Chamber, but was denied as no evidence of error in the judgement or proceedings was given.