Serb nationalist Vojislav Seselj, whose U.N. war crimes trial was scheduled to start Wednesday, said he will unlikely get a fair trial because prosecutors have not sent him thousands of pages of evidence that could help him clear his name.
Seselj, chairman of the popular nationalist Serbian Radical Party, is one of the most senior political figures in custody at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. His trial marks one of the court's few remaining chances to hold Serbian leaders responsible for the atrocities unleashed by the break up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
He is charged with recruiting notorious Serb paramilitaries and fanning ethnic tensions with hate-laced nationalistic speeches.
Seselj is also accused of planning the takeover of towns in Croatia and Bosnia as part of a criminal plot involving other political and military leaders including former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to create a Greater Serbia by expelling non-Serbs.
Milosevic died in custody in March last year before his genocide trial could finish. Other key suspects in the atrocities, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic, both indicted on genocide charges, remain on the run.
Seselj's trial started a year ago, but was almost immediately suspended because he was on a hunger strike to back various demands, including that he be allowed to defend himself _ a request the U.N. court eventually agreed to.
Seselj, 53, has pleaded innocent to the charges, which include murder, persecution, inhumane treatment and wanton destruction of property including religious buildings. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted.
"I have no other involvement in the crimes except what I said and wrote," he said Tuesday at a final pretrial hearing.
Seselj accused prosecutors of dragging their heels translating into Serbian 207,000 documents that could help him fight the charges and sending them to him on paper _ he refuses to use a computer to study evidence or prepare his defense.
Presiding judge Jean-Claude Antonetti said prosecutors had whittled down the number of pages to under 18,000, but added: "The trial is about to start and you do not have all the exculpatory material. This is true, nobody can deny this."
But Seselj insisted he wants all the documents. "Without that, it is impossible to have a fair trial," he told the three-judge panel.
Antonetti expressed surprise at the volume of the evidence that could help Seselj.
"If there are 207,000 pages of exculpatory evidence, it is hard to see why the indictment remains," he said.
Prosecutor Christine Dahl accused Seselj of deliberately hindering the prosecution with his demands, saying he made demands "when he knows it is untenable."
Prosecutors will make their opening statement Wednesday and Seselj will make a statement Thursday. The first prosecution witnesses, an expert who Dahl said will explain Seselj's "contribution to the collective violence that engulfed the Balkans" when he testifies starting Dec. 11.
Antonetti earmarked 120-125 hours each to prosecutors and Seselj to present their cases. Prosecutors want to call 101 witnesses, but Antonetti urged them to look for ways of cutting that number.
Seselj said he would call few witnesses, but would testify on his own behalf.
Seselj surrendered voluntarily in February 2003 declaring his innocence and vowing to turn the proceedings against him into a circus.
Among his disruptive courtroom antics in pretrial hearings, he has told judges to remove their robes because they reminded him of medieval inquisitors and refused to be represented by a court-appointed lawyer "with a bird's nest on his head," a reference to the British barrister's traditional wig.
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