"The decision will partly satisfy the Croats of Srijem," Petrovaradin parish priest Marko Kljajic, author of the most detailed testimony of suffering of the Croatian community in the area in the 1990s, said on Tuesday.
The appeals chamber of the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague issued a decision on Monday establishing the tribunal's jurisdiction over the events in Vojvodina in the early 1990s and saying that Seselj would have to answer for the deportation of Croats from 1992 although there was no armed conflict there at the time.
The decision is believed to be based on the testimony given by Kljajic in June this year and his book "How My People Were Dying".
The head of the Croatian National Council in Serbia and Montenegro, Josip Ivanovic, said that with this decision "justice will be served in a way and someone will finally answer for the maltreatment and expulsion of about 40,000 Croats, mainly from the Srijem region."
"Croats and Hungarians had to move out from Srijem villages, and one man was killed. Vojislav Seselj was in Hrtkovci on 6 May 1992 at a meeting where a list of unsuitable citizens of Croatian and Hungarian ethnicities was read out and soon they had to move away. Therefore, the crime was committed," senior provincial official Djordje Subotic said in an interview with the Novi Sad-based newspaper Gradjanski List published on Tuesday.
Subotic pointed out the fact that no one had answered for those crimes in Serbian courts, not even the head of the Hrtkovci commune, Ostoja Sibincic, who read out the list of "unsuitable" citizens.
"The problem is all the greater because the trial against him started, but was soon suspended and Sibincic was released from prison," Subotic said.