Serbian nationalist leader Vojislav Seselj waves to his supporters from a balcony of his Serbian Radical Party headquarters in Belgrade. (REUTERS File Photo)
THE HAGUE, April 11 (Reuters): U.N. war crimes judges on Wednesday imposed a prison sentence of 10 years on Serbian ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj, overturning an earlier acquittal on charges of persecution, deportation and inhumane acts.
Seselj, a close ally during the Balkan wars of then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, has already spent 12 years in pre-trial detention and the judges said his sentence was considered already served.
He was not present at the ruling in The Hague, having returned to Serbia in 2014 to undergo treatment for colon cancer.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ITCY) acquitted Seselj in 2016 of all charges against him, which also included murder, for allegedly stoking ethnic hatred at the start of the wars that broke apart the Yugoslav federation.
Appeals judges in a special chamber established to handle outstanding ICTY cases ruled that Seselj was criminally responsible, on the basis of a speech he gave in Hrtkovci, Serbia in May 1992, for "instigating deportation (and) persecution ...as crimes against humanity".
Seselj, 63, remains unrepentant, telling media he will never give up the idea of a Greater Serbia uniting all parts of Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia where Serbs live.
Prosecutors had called on the judges at the ICTY, which closed its doors last year, to reverse the acquittal or order a retail.
