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UPDATE: ICTY indictee Seselj arrives in Belgrade

BELGRADE, Nov 12 (Hina) - An indictee of the Hague war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and leader of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), Vojislav Seselj, arrived in Belgrade from Amsterdam around 1pm on Wednesday, welcomed by his family and several hundred followers and SRS members at the Nikola Tesla International Airport.

Seselj was previously granted a provisional release by the UN war crimes tribunal due to his poor health.

Despite previous announcements by SRS officials, Seselj did not address the press but immediately upon landing left for the SRS offices in Belgrade's neighbourhood of Zemun, greeted loudly by his supporters who, jostling one another, at intervals literally carried him down the arrivals terminal of the Belgrade airport.

Smiling at them, a visibly skinny Seselj greeted them back, departing for his party's offices, where he was expected to hold a meeting with SRS officials who led the party during his stay in The Hague.

Several hundred people gathered outside the SRS offices in Zemun, waiting for Seselj to address them after the meeting.

Addressing them, he said that he was only temporarily absent from The Hague, until he "topples the government", adding that the UN tribunal had "brutally evicted him from his cell" and calling the tribunal "a globalist beast that destroys lives".

"They have prosecuted there everything good that existed in Serbia in the 1990s. They have tried Serbs because they are Serbs, they have sentenced and imprisoned without any evidence. It has happened to Nikola Sainovic, (Radovan) Karadzic, Goran Hadzic," Seselj told his supporters, adding that he had been released against his will.

"Neither did I ask for it nor did they set any conditions. They just wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible," said Seselj, with the crowd shouting "Victory, victory".

He added that his temporary absence from The Hague would last until he toppled President Tomislav Nikolic and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, whom he called "renegades and traitors" serving interests of Western powers.

Seselj scheduled for Friday a regular session of his party, saying that he would meet with citizens at a big rally to be held in downtown Belgrade on Saturday.

Seselj's arrival attracted great media and public attention, with his followers starting to gather at the Nikola Tesla Airport as early as 11am, carrying party flags and wearing t-shirts and badges with his image. They cheered "Vojo, you Serb" and sang "Get ready, get ready, you Chetniks", shouting insults against PM Vucic and his government.

Seselj told the local Blic daily that he was happy about returning home, adding: "Politics is my priority, treatment comes only after that. I have two metastases, but it is not as bad as one thinks." He also said that he would not "shake hands with the traitors", but that he was not planning any revenge and that he had announced it in case the government's guarantees for his provisional release were contrary to his wishes.

Conspicuously, there was no particular tightening of security or deployment of additional police forces for Seselj's arrival, which was covered by a number of domestic and foreign media crews.

Minister of the Interior Nebojsa Stefanovic, vice-president of the Serbian Progressive Party, said that he would not be dealing with the past, dismissing claims by SRS members that the ruling structures would try to cause incidents at the rally to be held by the SRS on Saturday.

"(The government) refuses to be dragged into political mud and into the past, be it by Seselj, (SRS official Nemanja) Sarovic or anyone else from the SRS," Stefanovic said while responding to reporters' questions.

Seselj was expected to arrive home in the suburban neighbourhood of Batajnica later in the afternoon. His oldest son, Nikola, and his grandson arrived at Batajnica, where Seselj's neighbours were planning a big gathering for the occasion.

Seselj resents his formerly closest associates, incumbent President Tomislav Nikolic and Prime Minister Vucic having abandoned the SRS's Greater Serbia policy, having formed a faction within the SRS that has grown into the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and having embraced the policy of European integration.

Seselj believes that the current government in Belgrade, led by Vucic and Nikolic's SNS, is a traitorous government as were all the previous governments since his voluntary surrender to the UN tribunal.

After the party split and the last elections, the SRS has become a nonparliamentary party.

SNS officials have said that they do not see anything bad about Seselj's return, with the head of the SNS parliamentary group, Zoran Babic, saying that SNS members had nothing to worry about because Seselj's policy was a thing of the past.

Seselj surrendered voluntarily to the Hague tribunal in February 2003 and spent more than 11 and a half years in its custody, but his verdict has not been announced yet. He was tried for crimes against the Croat and Muslim populations in Croatia, Vojvodina and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 1991 to 1993.

After the trial, which started in late 2007, the verdict was to have been announced on 30 October 2013, but the hearing was postponed after the tribunal granted Seselj's motion that Judge Frederik Harhoff be excluded from the proceedings for bias. Senegalese judge Mandiaye Niang, appointed as the replacement, has been familiarising himself with the case since then. ICTY President Theodor Meron said this would last until mid 2015, when the trial chamber in charge of the case should start deliberating on a verdict.

Seselj has returned to Serbia in line with the ICTY's decision to provisionally release him on account of his poor health.

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