Published April 11, 2018
The Latest on the sentencing of Serb ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj (all times local):
4:45 p.m.
Serbia's ultranationalist leader Vojislav Seselj has shown no remorse after U.N. appeals judges overturned his acquittal for crimes against humanity during the 1990s' Yugoslav war.
Seselj was initially acquitted in 2016. Judges on Wednesday sentenced him to 10 years in prison, which he had already served while in custody.
Seselj on Wednesday described the ruling in a phone statement to The Associated Press as "illegal." He insists the court in The Hague, Netherlands, should have ordered a retrial instead.
He adds he is "proud of all the war crimes and crimes against humanity that were attributed to me, and I am ready to repeat them in the future."
Seselj says judges "lied that there were systematic attacks" on Croats in Serbia in the 1990s. Judges have said a speech by Seselj in May 1992 incited crimes against the Croat minority.
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4:40 p.m.
Amnesty International has welcomed a United Nations court's verdict against Serbian far-right leader Vojislav Sesel, saying his conviction delivers long overdue justice to the victims of the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s.
The rights group's Europe Director Gauri van Gulik says that "despite the fact that the Appeals Chamber cleared Vojislav Seselj of other war crimes, it is significant that it found there was indeed a 'widespread or systematic attack against the non-Serbian civilian population in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.'"
A UN court in The Hague, Netherlands, on Wednesday partly overturned a 2016 acquittal of Seselj on war crimes charges and sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment. But because he had already been in prison for almost a dozen years, the sentencing will have no practical impact on him.
Amnesty International says "it is now vital that the national courts step up their efforts to bring remaining perpetrators to justice."
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3 p.m.
A United Nations court has partly overturned the acquittal of Serbian ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj on war crimes and sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment.
Seselj, accused of persecution, murder and torture during the former Yugoslavia's bloody conflict in the 1990s, was acquitted in 2016 of nine war crimes and crimes against humanity charges.
But because he had already been in prison for almost a dozen years before returning to Belgrade in 2014, Wednesday's sentencing will have no practical impact on him.
Seselj told the Associated Press on just prior to the reading of the verdict in The Hague, the Netherlands that "I don't care about the ruling. Now I'll go and have a siesta."
The prosecution had said that acquitting Seselj would have damaged the war crimes tribunal's legacy.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/the-latest-serb-leader-defiant-after-war-crimes-verdict