UN tribunal orders arrest of prosecutor's spokeswoman

AFP – The UN Yugoslav war crimes court issued an arrest warrant Wednesday against a former spokeswoman for the tribunal's chief prosecutor for refusing to pay a 7,000-euro ($10,000) fine.

Florence Hartmann, a French national, was found guilty of contempt in 2009 for disclosing confidential details of the trial of the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

"The French Republic is hereby directed and authorised to search for, arrest, detain and surrender promptly to the tribunal, Florence Hartmann," the Hague-based court said in an order.

Her fine "has been converted to a term of seven days of imprisonment," it added.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found her guilty of contempt in September 2009 for having "knowingly and wilfully interfered with the administration of justice".

Hartmann was prosecuted for writing about two confidential appeals chamber decisions in a 2007 book she authored on the ICTY and in a later published article.

The confidential information which emerged during Milosevic trial allegedly implicates the Serbian state in the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica.

Hartmann covered the Balkan wars of the 1990s as a journalist for French newspaper Le Monde and went on to become spokeswoman for former ICTY chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte from 2000 to 2006.

Del Ponte was succeeded by current prosecutor Serge Brammertz.