Latest update : 2016-03-29
A hundred Balkan rights groups and some 100 journalists and activists declared support Monday for a French former spokesman for the Yugoslav war crimes court after she was arrested for writing a book containing confidential court details.
French national Florence Hartmann was sentenced on appeal to seven days in prison in 2009. She was detained on the orders of her former employer.
Hartmann, a former Balkans correspondent for French daily Le Monde, was grabbed by blue-shirted UN guards in
front of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia’s (ICTY) entrance, where she once worked as the spokeswoman
for former prosecutor Carla Del Ponte between 2000-2006.
Since her detention, which came as she was trying to attend the landmark verdict for wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Hartmann has been held under "suicide watch conditions", her lawyer said at the weekend.
"Civil society representatives from the region of the former
Yugoslavia hereby voice their support for Florence Hartmann and her
uncompromising struggle for truth," said Monday's letter with 100
signatories.
It said Hartmann was sentenced "because of exposing and countering
the practice of concealing documents in order to protect the interests
of some states".
Hartmann was prosecuted in 2007 for revealing details of two
confidential appeals chamber decisions in a book published that year.
The data, which emerged during the trial of late Serbian strongman
Slobodan Milosevic, allegedly implicated the Serbian state in the 1995
Srebrenica massacre of almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Bosnia.
Hartmann was initially fined €7,000 ($7,800) for contempt and in
2011, after she had not paid the fine, ICTY judges sentenced her to
seven days in jail.
The court asked French authorities to arrest her, but they refused.
"We are profoundly convinced that what Florence Hartmann did may be
contrary to the ICTY Statute but is certainly not contrary to justice.
Quite the opposite," Monday's letter said.
It said the tribunal had shown "weakness" over Vojislav Seselj, a
Serbian war crimes suspect who will not be present at the court this
week to hear his verdict owing to alleged medical reasons.
He is however standing in parliamentary elections in April and has led anti-government protests in Belgrade.
The letter referred to Serbia's refusal to hand over Seselj and three
other members of his Serbian Radical party who are accused of contempt
of court.
"The Hague Tribunal used to apply the same standards to all accused
persons in the past, so it should do so in this case too," it said.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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