Interpol has issued high-priority red notices for the arrest of three associates of Serbian ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj. The three individuals are accused of witness tampering, the United Nation's former Yugoslavia war crimes court says.
"Petar Jojic, Jovo Ostojicm and Vjerica Radeta have been charged with contempt of court for allegedly having threatened, intimidated, offered bribes to, or otherwise interfered with two witnesses in the trial against Vojislav Seselj and a related contempt case against him," the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said on March 31.
A statement said The Hague court turned to Interpol because Serbia has been noncompliant in executing its arrest warrants for the three dating back to 2015.
Seselj spent 11 years in UN detention while on trial before the ICTY for alleged ethnic cleansing during brutal paramilitary campaigns in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
The 62-year-old returned to Serbia in 2015 to undergo cancer treatment while awaiting a verdict in the trial.
He was acquitted in 2016 on all counts, pending appeal, and returned to Serbia in time for elections that year, when he led his Radical Party to 23 seats in the national parliament.
Seselj is currently a candidate in Serbia’s April 2 presidential election.
Interpol notices are international requests for cooperation or alerts allowing police in member countries to share critical crime-related information.
In the case of a red notice, the persons concerned are wanted by national jurisdictions for prosecution or to serve a sentence based on an arrest warrant or court decision.
