France denies request to arrest journalist

PARIS, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- France says it refused a Yugoslav war crimes tribunal request to arrest a French journalist convicted of contempt for revealing confidential information.

Bernard Valero, chief spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, said the country's agreements with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia require it to implement tribunal arrest mandates only against those convicted of "the serious crimes that the tribunal has as its mission to judge," but not offenses against the court, The Washington Post reported.

Florence Hartmann's contempt conviction falls under the category of an offense against the court, Valero said at a ministry briefing.

Hartmann, a French national who covered the Bosnian war in the 1990s for the French newspaper Le Monde and served as a spokeswoman for the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 2006-2007, published a book in 2007 containing information on Serbia's involvement in the Bosnian conflict.

She was convicted of contempt by a special panel of the Yugoslav tribunal in September 2009 and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. She appealed and refused to pay, but an appeals panel upheld the conviction last month and sentenced her seven days in prison instead of the fine.

The appeals panel requested the French government arrest her and turn her over in The Hague.

Hartmann's book detailed a secret court ruling that allowed the Serbian government to prevent from being made public confidential documents provided to the court. The documents showed Serbia's involvement in the Bosnian war, the Post reported.

The documents, Hartmann said, revealed then-President Slobodan Milosevic's military support of Bosnian Serb forces and his ties to wartime atrocities committed by those forces.

Hartmann said the real issues in the case against her are freedom of speech and the legitimacy of the court's contempt ruling -- made, she said, because it felt offended.

The tribune did not immediately respond to France's decision.