In the latest in a series of provocative stunts, Serbian nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj pledged to seek a review of Milorad Ulemek’s conviction for the 2003 murder of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.
The EU Summit on the Western Balkans, held in Sofia on May 17, was meant to be the showpiece event of Bulgaria’s presidency of the European Union. In the end, it made little impact on deciding the future of region, while recent events in Kosovo have placed a cloud over the EU’s entire Western Balkans strategy.
An advisory body to the Council of Europe has supported the criticisms that Serbian judges have made about proposed constitutional changes, the Judges’ Association of Serbia said.
“People are not questioning the information that they’re getting, and its really leaving a lot of space for malinformation, leaving many misinformed.”
During the war he described Muslims as “excrement” and called for Croats to have their eyes gouged out.
Seselj tweeted that he was “proud of all my war crimes” and was “ready to repeat them”.
Before the hearing, he said: “I don’t care about the ruling. Now I’ll go and have a siesta.”
Lawyers and NGOs urged the Serbian parliament to call a halt to Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj’s term as an MP because he was convicted of wartime crimes by the UN court in The Hague.
Serbia’s information commissioner, NGOs, and experts have criticised a draft law that they say will make it easier for institutions and companies to withhold important information from the public.
Serbia’s Ministry of State Administration has come under fire for proposing a law that many experts fear will allow institutions to avoid answering freedom of information requests, while totally exempting state-owned commercial companies from the obligation to do so.
Following the brutal slaying of Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic, analysts from both Serbia and Kosovo fear for the future of the EU-led dialogue, which was already in trouble.
Following a string of purges in the wake of the failed 2016 coup in Turkey, hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs, and tens of thousands more were arrested. Many political opponents of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fled the country. A partisan judicial system, along with reports of torture in Turkish jails, provided sufficient grounds for many European states to disallow the extradition of Turkish citizens to their home country, even when they were wanted for arrest by Interpol.
