A former spokeswoman for the UN war crimes court at The Hague is being held in isolation with the lights on. French journalist Florence Hartmann was dramatically detained on Thursday as she waited to get inside the tribunal to hear the verdict against former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Kardzic. Hartmann was convicted of contempt in 2009 for releasing confidential documents in a 2007 book.
Hartmann, a former correspondent for French daily Le Monde, was being held “under suicide watch conditions, meaning with light in her cell 24-hours a day and that she is being checked on every 15 minutes by the guards,” her lawyer, Guenael Mettraux told AFP.
In a phone call Hartmann described “watching General Ratko Mladić [the accused Bosnian Serb military leader] walking around the yard and associating with other prisoners while I’m locked away in a cage. The outrageous thing was to see the UN and Dutch police kick away women from Srebrenica and survivors from the camps who were trying to protect me from arrest, after all they’ve been through,” reports the Guardian.
Hartmann had been fined €7,000, which then turned into a seven-day jail sentence when the tribunal said she had not paid. But France refused to extradite her. Because of the Easter holiday, Hartmann is likely to be held in isolation until at least Tuesday, her lawyer said.
In a statement, the United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals acknowledged it arrested Hartmann “executing an outstanding arrest warrant issued in November 2011 by the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).”