Judges for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] on Wednesday accused Belgrade of not cooperating in their efforts to arrest three suspects charged with witness tampering. The UN tribunal issued arrest warrants for the three men, Petar Jojic, Vjerica Radeta and Jovo Ostojic, last January after charging them with allegedly “having threatened, intimidated, offered bribes to, or otherwise interfered with two witnesses” in two cases involving Serbian nationalist leader Vojislav Seselj [case materials], who has been indicted for war crimes. The warrants allege [AFP report], among other things, that Jojic and Radeta, both members of Seselj’s defense team, approached a witness for the prosecution and that Jojic dictated statements for witnesses to memorize and sign. The judges for the tribunal Wednesday expressed frustration that Belgrade has “had more than a year to arrest them,” and ordered Serbia to draft regular reports of their efforts to apprehend the three suspects.

The ICTY [JURIST backgrounder] and the Balkan States continue to prosecute those accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity that left more than 100,000 people dead and millions displaced during the Balkan conflict of the 1990s. Earlier this week Bosnian Serb General Zdravko Tolimir died in custody [JURIST report] in The Hague after being convicted of genocide and given a life sentence by UN judges in 2012. In December the appeals chamber of the ICTY ordered a retrial [JURIST report] for two senior Serbian officials acquitted of war crimes during the conflict. In May the ICTY ordered [JURIST report] Serbia’s justice ministry to return Seselj to his detention cell immediately. Seselj had been held in The Hague on charges of leading ethnic Serbs to persecute non-Serbs during the Croatia and Bosnia wars in the 1990s but was released last year [JURIST op-ed] to return to Serbia for cancer treatment. Seselj has pleaded not guilty on nine counts including murder and torture. The ICTY had revoked his provisional release [JURIST report] in March, because Seselj spoke at a news conference in Belgrade and stated that he would not return voluntarily to The Hague.