Serb war crimes suspect flies to the Hague

An ultranationalist Serbian leader accused of war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia today flew to the Netherlands to surrender to the UN tribunal.

Vojislav Seselj was a close ally of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who is already on trial in The Hague.

The 48-year-old leader of the Serbian Radical Party, who is known for his fierce temper and controversial remarks, is accused of 14 crimes against humanity between August 1991 and September 1993.

He said he was surrendering “in order to destroy the evil tribunal, an American instrument against the Serbs”.

“I will blast them to pieces,” he added. Seselj is a lawyer by profession who intends to defend himself in court. “I will come back from The Hague victorious.”

He told hundreds cheering him at Belgrade airport: “The most important thing is that I be the last Serb who goes to The Hague.”

Bidding him farewell, the cheering fans shouted, “Vojo, the Serb,” using his nickname.

Yesterday he had told thousands who gathered for a farewell rally: “I go to The Hague to win, to defy them all, to speak for the slain Serb freedom fighters. But brothers and sisters, don’t let any other Serb go after me.”

Although Seselj is not directly linked to any murders, his notorious paramilitary troops – known as “Chetniks” – are alleged to have committed “violent extermination and expulsion” of non-Serbs from the regions of former Yugoslavia in order to create Greater Serbia.

The Bosnian-born Seselj has long stood out in the colourful Serbian political scene. When he rallied his supporters for an armed rebellion against Croatia’s succession from Yugoslavia in 1992, he threatened to scoop out Croats’ eyes with rusty spoons. He later claimed the remark was a joke.

He twice drew a gun and pointed it at anti-Milosevic protesters in Belgrade during the 1990s, and wore a pistol tucked into his belt.

Though Milosevic arrested him four times for his outspokenness, – including one time when he dubbed Milosevic’s neo-communist wife, Mirjana Markovic, “the Red Witch” – Seselj buried his differences with the former president in 1998 when Milosevic started his military crackdown in Kosovo, the mostly ethnic Albanian southern province of Serbia.

It was not clear what prompted Seselj, an ally of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, to deliver himself voluntarily while several other Serb war crimes suspects continue to evade the UN tribunal.