On March 31, 2016, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) acquitted (only available in French) Vojislav Šešelj, former Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia and current head of the Serbian Radical Party.  According to the press release, Šešelj faced nine counts, including three counts of crimes against humanity and six counts of war crimes. He was accused of recruiting and arming Serb paramilitary forces who between 1991 and 1993 took part in atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia. According to a news report, the prosecution alleged that Šešelj incited violence by advocating for a “Greater Serbia” through forced displacement of Bosnian Muslims and Croats. His supporters are alleged to have committed atrocities, including during the 1991 siege of Vukovar. According to the case information sheet, he was charged individually and through his alleged participation in a joint criminal enterprise. Specific charges included incitement to commit torture, persecution, deportation, forcible transfer, murder, wanton destruction, damage to religious and educational institutions, and plunder. His acquittal was primarily based on two grounds. The first was insufficient evidence of a criminal purpose. The majority found that his aim of recruiting volunteers to create a “Great Serbia” was a political, rather than a criminal endeavor. The second ground for his acquittal was insufficient evidence that he had “hierarchical responsibility” or effective control over the paramilitary forces who he recruited. In the summary of the judgment, Presiding Judge Jean-Claude Antonetti said the “findings do not by any means presume to underestimate, and even less to conceal, the crimes committed in different localities in Croatia and [Bosnia], in which the volunteers deployed by Vojislav Šešelj or his party may have taken part or have been indirectly involved. . . . The majority simply notes that it is not satisfied that the recruitment and subsequent deployment of volunteers implies that Vojislav Šešelj knew of these crimes on the ground, or that he instructed or endorsed them.” Judge Flavia Lattanzi wrote a dissenting opinion in which she argued that evidence of Šešelj’s moral and material support for paramilitary groups was sufficient to find that he aided and abetted the commission of eight of the nine crimes with which he was charged. Lattanzi also alleged that intimidation of witnesses hampered the prosecution’s case. Šešelj’s trial began in 2007. At the time the verdict was rendered, Šešelj was in Serbia, where the Tribunal granted him leave to return to undergo treatment for cancer. Reacting to the verdict in a press statement, the Tribunal’s prosecutor, Serge Brammetz, said, “I'm absolutely convinced that the victims' communities and many people will not be satisfied with this outcome.” The prosecution has announced its intention to appeal the acquittal.