ABSTRACT
At the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals which took over from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 2018, the Appeals Chamber, while finding Vojislav Seselj guilty for hate speech in Vojvodina, confirmed his acquittal for war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia, a verdict which did little towards establishing an accurate record of the many atrocities committed under his command. The inconsistent application of facts between the Trial Chambers alleged by the Radovan Karadzic defence was perhaps inevitable given the increasing complexity of some trials and the different judicial systems. Due to the tribunal’s completion strategy and financial constraints, the prosecutors were restricted in the scope of the indictment, and under heavy pressure to exclude many areas where some of the most heinous crimes against non-Serbs had occurred, resulting in the Karadzic indictment for Genocide Count 1 being whittled down to just seven municipalities, and in Mladic to six.
