2 hours agoSezel refuses to hand over MP's mandate
Periskopi(8 years ago)
(8 years ago)Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav SESHel said he would resign as an MP despite his war crimes sentence, which robs him of the right to sit in parliament. Vojislav Shesheli, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for crimes against humanity in Serbia, said Friday that the law [...]
Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav SESHel said he would resign as an MP despite his war crimes sentence, which robs him of the right to sit in parliament.
Vojislav Shesheli, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for crimes against humanity in Serbia, said Friday that the law, which stipulates an MP's mandate ends if he or she is sentenced to a six-month prison charge, is not implemented in his case.
“This provision of the law applies only to those who must serve prison,” the leader of the Serbian Radical Party Shesheli for the daily Blic newspaper.
SESH was sentenced by the Mechanism for International Criminal Court in The Hague this week to ten years in prison for inciting nationalist crimes in Serbia's Vojvodina region during the war in 1992.
But he will not go to prison because he has already spent more than 11 years in custody at The Hague.
However, Serbian law does not recognise this as a reason not to remove an MP's mandate.
Article 88 of the Law on the Election of Deputies clearly stipulates that the MP's mandate ends if he is given a suspended prison sentence of six months or more.
However, under parliamentary law and regulation, the MP must personally submit his/her resignation to parliament.
Only after that must the relevant parliamentary board for administrative issues admit that the MP's mandate has ended.
Opposition MP Alexandra Jerkov, who is deputy member of the parliamentary board, told BIRN that different interpretations of the law issued by SESHel and his supporters are invalid.
“Of course we will insist on starting a procedure to end SESH's mandate,” said Jerkov.
Lawyers and NGOs have called on the Serbian Parliament to remove Schehel since his conviction Wednesday.
The NGO Centre for Humanitarian Law also warned Friday against allowing Scheel's stay in parliament.
The “is paradoxical for a man like Seheshel, who has been convicted of violating the security rights of civilians on Serbia's territory, to sit on parliament's board for control of security services,” said HLC in a press release.
The Hague tribunal acquitted SESH of war crimes charges in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
