Vojislav Šešelj (, ; born 11 October 1954) is a Serbian politician and war criminal. He is the founder and president of the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS). From 1998 to 2000, he was a deputy prime minister of Serbia.
In January 2003, Šešelj was charged by the ICTY with crimes against humanity and war crimes stemming from the Croatian War of Independence and Bosnian War. These charges were confirmed by a judge on February 14, 2003, and Šešelj surrendered to the ICTY on February 23, 2003. His trial did not begin until November 7, 2007. Šešelj's trial was marred by controversy: he went on a hunger strike for nearly a month until finally being allowed to represent himself, regularly insulted the judges and court prosecutors once proceedings commenced, disclosed the identities of protected witnesses and was penalized on three occasions for disrespecting the court. He did not call any witnesses in his defense.
After spending 11 years and 9 months in detention in the United Nations Detention Unit of Scheveningen during his trial, Šešelj was permitted to temporarily return to Serbia in November 2014 to undergo cancer treatment. He led the SRS in the 2016 elections, and his party won 23 seats in the parliament.
On 31 March 2016, he was acquitted in a first-instance verdict on all counts by the ICTY. The acquittal was appealed by prosecutors from the MICT, a United Nations Security Council agency which functions as oversight program of, and successor entity to, the ICTY. On 11 April 2018, the Appeals Chamber partially reversed the first-instance verdict, finding Šešelj guilty of crimes against humanity for his role in instigating the deportation of Croats from Hrtkovci. He was found not guilty on the remaining counts of his indictment, including all the war crimes and crimes against humanity that he was alleged to have committed in Croatia and Bosnia. Šešelj was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but because of time already spent in ICTY custody, he was not obligated to return to prison. In August 2018 Šešelj appealed the conviction to the MICT Appeals Chamber, but was denied as no evidence of error in the judgement or proceedings was given.
Early life Vojislav Šešelj was born in Sarajevo, PR Bosnia and Herzegovina, FPR Yugoslavia, to Nikola Šešelj (1925–1978) and Danica Šešelj (née Misita; 1924–2007), Serbs from the Popovo Valley region of eastern Herzegovina. His parents wed in 1953 before moving to Sarajevo, where they lived on modest means in adapted housing at the old Sarajevo train station as his father was employed in the state-run ŽTP railway company. His mother stayed at home and took care of her two children, Vojislav and his younger sister, Dragica. A relative on his mother's side was Chetnik commander Lt. Col. Veselin Misita.
Education Šešelj began his elementary education in September 1961 at the Vladimir Nazor Primary School before transferring to the newly built Bratstvo i Jedinstvo primary school. A successful student until the fourth grade, he increasingly grew uninterested with the curriculum, realising the minimal effort he needed in order to achieve adequate grades. History was his favourite subject and he generally preferred social sciences to natural ones.
For his secondary education, Šešelj enrolled at the First Sarajevo Gymnasium, receiving good grades. He was involved with student organisations in school as the president of the gymnasium's student union and later as the president of its youth committee.
Šešelj continued going to youth work actions for summer holidays while at the gymnasium. In 1972 and 1973, he worked as a labourer around the Morava River, building embankments.
Undergraduate After his second level schooling, Šešelj enrolled at the University of Sarajevo's faculty of law in autumn 1973. He additionally took part in student bodies becoming a vice-dean counterpart in the student organisation for fifteen months. Controversy followed him again as he openly criticised Fuad Muhić, a candidate for dean, publicly proclaiming Muhić unfit to perform the duties of that position. Muhić still got elected to the post. After being a tutor for freshmen, Šešelj became a course demonstrator, holding two sets of tutorials per week, helping professors with student oral exams as well as with conference papers. In 1975, as part of a university delegation, the 21-year-old Šešelj visited the University of Mannheim in West Germany for two weeks, which was his first trip abroad. He completed his four-year undergraduate studies in two years and eight months.
Postgraduate Immediately after graduating in 1976, Šešelj wanted a job as assistant lecturer at the University of Sarajevo's faculty of law; however, no assistant positions were posted at the faculty for the following school year, leaving him with nothing to apply for. Šešelj saw the unusual situation as Muhić's personal revenge for Šešelj's public criticism.
Realizing he had minimal chances of getting hired at the faculty of law in Sarajevo, Šešelj turned his attention to other faculties. While preparing his application for the faculty of law in Mostar (at the time organizationally transforming from a remote unit of Sarajevo's law faculty into a separate independent educational entity) where they needed assistants for courses on constitutional law, he learned of an assistant job posting at Sarajevo University's faculty of political science for a course called "Political Parties and Organizations" and decided instead to apply there. He had friends, such as Zdravko Grebo, Rodoljub Marjanović, and Milan Tomić, already working at the faculty as assistants, while Grebo's mother was the faculty's dean.
After learning that the 'Political Parties and Organisations' course was taught by professor Atif Purivatra, a friend and political companion of Muhić, Šešelj withdrew his application, fearing a rejection that would reflect badly on future vocational efforts. Through Grebo's mother, Šešelj learned the faculty was about to establish the Department for People's Defence, where many assistants would be needed.
During this time, Šešelj also began his postgraduate studies, enrolling in November 1976 at the University of Belgrade's faculty of law. Due to employment obligations in Sarajevo, he did not move to Belgrade, but instead travelled there twice a month to attend lectures and obtain literature. He earned his master's degree in June 1977 with a thesis titled The Marxist Concept of an Armed People.Istinomer profile
In 1978, he spent two and a half months at the Grand Valley State Colleges in the US in its exchange program with the University of Sarajevo.
Also in 1978, after returning from the U.S., Šešelj began pursuing a doctorate at the Belgrade University's faculty of law. After submitting his dissertation in early autumn 1979, he chose specialisation at the University of Greifswald in East Germany. He earned his doctorate on 26 November 1979, after successfully defending his dissertation titled The Political Essence of Militarism and Fascism, which made him the youngest PhD holder in Yugoslavia at 25 years of age.
In December 1979, Šešelj joined the Yugoslav People's Army to serve his mandatory military service and was stationed in Belgrade. He completed his army service in November 1980, but in the meantime he had lost his position at the University of Sarajevo's faculty of political sciences.
Academic career University of Sarajevo In the early 1980s, Šešelj began to associate more with individuals from dissident intellectual circles in Belgrade, some of whom had Serbian nationalist political leanings. He repeatedly held Muslim professors at the faculty of political sciences responsible for his situation, openly criticising his former friend Atif Purivatra, as well as Hasan Sušić, and Omer Ibrahimagić, for having harmed his career and denouncing them as Pan-Islamists.Vojislav ŠEŠELJ, Hajka na jeretika/Campaign against a Heretic (Beograd: ABC Glas, 1991), p. 12.
In September 1981, Šešelj joined the faculty of political sciences, as one of its youngest members. The faculty of political sciences, as a breeding ground for future politicians, was closely controlled and overseen by the Communist Party, and outspoken Šešelj quickly drew the attention of party officials.
Controversy and UDBA The biggest controversy was raised when Šešelj came up against faculty colleague Brano Miljuš. A protege of Hamdija Pozderac and Branko Mikulić (SR Bosnia-Herzegovina's highest and most powerful political figures at the time), Miljuš was well positioned within the communist apparatus as the secretary of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Communist League's Sarajevo branch. Šešelj dissected Miljuš's master's degree thesis and accused him of plagiarising more than 40 pages in it from the published works by Edvard Kardelj.BRANO S ONOGA SVETA Ko je novi mandatar vlade u Banjaluci i da li ce nekadasnji prepisivac Karla Marksa uspeti da napravi politicki kapital?, NIN 1 January 1999.Novi mandatar u RS – Viša dedinjska matematika , Vreme.com, 9 January 1999.
Šešelj criticised the highest political echelons, particularly Pozderac who was the reviewer of Miljuš's master's degree thesis. A power struggle spilled outside the faculty and into the political institutions and corridors of power. Other faculty members and intellectuals to offer their support to Šešelj included Boro Gojković, Džemal Sokolović, Hidajet Repovac, Momir Zeković and Ina Ovadija-Musafija. The Pozderac side was stronger; Šešelj was expelled from the Communist League on 4 December 1981.
By spring 1982, barely six months after being re-hired, his position at the faculty of political sciences was in jeopardy. He ended up being demoted to the Institute for Social Research (Institut za društvena istraživanja), an institution affiliated with the faculty. Belgrade intellectuals, mostly writers and researchers in the social sciences, came to his defence by writing letters of protest to the government of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to the .
He began to be spied on by UDBA agents. Šešelj's first arrest took place on 8 February 1984, the second day of the Sarajevo Olympics. He was on a train from Sarajevo heading to Belgrade when the secret police burst on board around Podlugovi station and seized some of his writings that he had in the suitcase. Among the agents handling his arrest that day was Dragan Kijac (later Republika Srpska state security chief).
In Doboj, Šešelj was taken off the train, transferred into a police Mercedes, and transported to Belgrade where he was questioned for 27 hours before being released and informed that he would be contacted again. After getting back to Sarajevo, UDBA took him in twice more for questionings, which were handled by Rašid Musić and Milan Krnjajić. According to Šešelj, they had the transcripts of the various conversations he had with some of his closest friends in which he and his friends openly criticised subjects ranging from specific political figures and the communist regime in general, and were trying to get him to implicate them as a basis for "a group trial for ethnic balance purposes, [...] a Serbian group to persecute since they just convicted Izetbegović's Muslim one."
On 20 April 1984, he was arrested at a private apartment in Belgrade among the group of 28 individuals during the lecture given by Milovan Đilas as part of Free University, a semi-clandestine organisation that gathered intellectuals critical of the communist regime. Šešelj spent four days in prison before being released.
Prison