The judges however said that in line with the court’s rules, “Seselj’s sentence has been served” after he spent about 12 years in jail while facing trial at the former Yugoslav war crimes court. "It was important that he was convicted, particularly since all the other suspects from Serbia indicted over Bosnia were either acquitted or died before their trials were completed or begun," Hoare said. Judges in The Hague sentenced Seselj to 10 years on charges including deportation, but since he spent 12 years in pre-trial detention the penalty was considered already served. “I am proud of all my war crimes and crimes against humanity and am ready to repeat them,” Seselj told Reuters by telephone from Serbia, saying the fresh verdict is not valid and the appeals court should only have had the power to order a retrial. However, appeal judges in a special chamber handling outstanding ICTY cases ruled that Seselj was criminally responsible because of a speech he gave in Hrtkovci, Serbia, in May 1992, for “instigating deportation (and) persecution . “The appeals chamber finds that no reasonable trier of fact could have concluded that there was no widespread or systematic attack against the non-Serbian population in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

During his marathon trial, prosecutors alleged Seselj was behind the murders of scores of Croat, Muslim and other non-Serbs between 1991 and 1993 in the conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart, after the fall of communism. A United Nations war crimes court on Wednesday sentenced a Serbian ultranationalist to 10 years in prison, partially overturning his acquittal over crimes against humanity and other charges dating to the Balkan wars in the 1990s. Prosecutors had accused him of war crimes including persecution, murder and torture and had demanded a 28-year sentence for his support of Serb paramilitaries during the bloody wars in Croatia and Bosnia that claimed over 100,000 lives and left millions homeless.
The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals partly overturns the acquittal of Serb radical nationalist Vojislav Šešelj and finds him guilty of crimes against humanity during the Yugoslav Wars. He is not detained as he served more than eleven years in the court's custody, and takes to Twitter to declare himself "proud of my war crimes" and "ready to repeat them".