Hague Trial Of Serb Ultranationalist Opens Nov. 7

Vojislav Seselj gave himself up to the court in 2003 and pleaded not guilty.

The leader of Serbia's ultranationalist Radical Party faces charges including murder, torture and persecution of non-Serbs when his much-delayed trial opens at the U.N. war crimes tribunal on Wednesday.

Vojislav Seselj gave himself up to the court in 2003 and pleaded not guilty. He remains leader of the Radicals, Serbia's strongest single party for almost a decade.

The trial is due to start at 0800 GMT. It had been set to begin late last year but Seselj went on hunger strike for 28 days after being prevented from defending himself.

He eventually won back the right to self-defence.

Prosecutors accuse Seselj of making inflammatory speeches calling for the creation of a "Greater Serbia" and inciting hatred of Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb people during the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

They say he recruited Serbian volunteers and indoctrinated them with his "extreme ethnic rhetoric" and was involved in plans to forcibly remove the non-Serb population from parts of Croatia and Bosnia with "particular violence and brutality".

Hundreds of non-Serbs were detained, beaten, tortured and killed by Serb forces Seselj recruited or influenced, prosecutors say. He is charged with murder, torture, persecution, cruel treatment, deportation, forcible transfer, inhumane acts, wanton destruction and plunder.

"We are going to clean Bosnia of pagans and show them a road which will take them to the east, where they belong," Seselj told a rally in 1992, according to the indictment.

In Serbia's capital Belgrade, Seselj's party put up posters of their leader reading "The trial begins -- end Hague tyranny".

The party has arranged for the trial to be shown live by a small, private television station after state television turned down their request to broadcast proceedings.

"He's ready, despite the injustices inflicted on him by The Hague and its servants in Belgrade, to defend himself with arguments that show the truth of who started the crisis in ex-Yugoslavia," party secretary Aleksandar Vucic told Reuters.

"It is certain that with these facts he will defeat the Hague tribunal," Vucic said.

The Radicals do not expect a fair trial, he said. "But we are sure he will not only defend himself, but also protect and defend the Serb people, and prove Serbia is not guilty."

Seselj, 53, has routinely disrupted pre-trial proceedings by insulting judges and refusing to cooperate with defence lawyers imposed on him by the court whom he called "spies".

He was close to the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who died in detention in The Hague in March 2006 a few months before a verdict was due in his war crimes trial.