ZAGREB, June 4, 2018 – The leadership of the Serb Radical Party (SRS) on Sunday held a meeting in the village of Hrtkovci in a property recently purchased by the SRS leader and war crimes convict Vojislav Šešelj, Vojvodina media outlets reported on Monday.
In mid-May, Šešelj, who was found guilty of war crimes against Croats in Vojvodina, bought that property in the village of Hrtkovci, which has become the byword for mass-scale deportation of and persecution of Vojvodina Croats in the 1990s. Vojvodina is a province within Serbia.
In April, the Appeals Chamber of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, the successor to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, sentenced Šešelj to ten years’ imprisonment for crimes against humanity over the inflammatory speech in Hrtkovci which it found resulted in the deportation, persecution, displacement and other inhumane acts against Vojvodina Croats. Šešelj did not have to go to jail because the time he spent in detention in The Hague was credited to the sentence.
In early May, Šešelj said that, despite a ban from the Serbian authorities, the Radicals would rally on May 6 in Hrtkovci. The rally was not held, however, he later bought the property which now houses the offices of his party.
Asked by the press whether he would move into the house in Hrtkovci, Šešelj said on Sunday that he had first to carry out the administrative procedure including the legalisation of the property. The property is located in Školska Street, in the very centre of the village in the Vojvodina region, only 300 metres away from the Saint Clement Catholic church.
