French Journalist Is Detained at U.N. War Crimes Tribunal

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Florence Hartmann was arrested on Thursday, before the genocide verdict
against Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, was given.
Credit Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/European Pressphoto Agency Europe
French Journalist Is Detained at U.N. War Crimes Tribunal

By MARLISE SIMONS  MARCH 27, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/world/europe/french-journalist-is-detained-at-un-war-crimes-tribunal.html?_r=0

  "THE HAGUE — Shortly before the announcement of a genocide verdict on
   Thursday for Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, security
   guards at the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former
   Yugoslavia received an extraordinary order from the court presidency:
   They were told to arrest a French journalist, Florence Hartmann, who
   could be found outside the tribunal gates with survivors of the Bosnian
   war.
   
   They did arrest her, assisted by the Dutch police, who pushed back
   onlookers and Bosnian war victims who tried to protect her.
   
   Since then, Ms. Hartmann, a former correspondent for Le Monde, has been
   locked up at the tribunal prison on the outskirts of The Hague to serve
   a pending seven-day sentence for a contempt of court conviction from
   2009. She is in an isolated section of the jail, said Guénaël Mettraux,
   her lawyer. "The idea is that she cannot mingle with anyone, either war
   crimes suspects or convicts, even if she wanted to," he said.
   
   Ms. Hartmann is being kept on a suicide watch, which means that the
   light must stay on 24 hours a day so that guards can check on her every
   15 minutes, Mr. Mettraux said. These are standard operating procedures
   for arriving war criminals, but the lawyer said treating a journalist
   this way was "incomprehensible."
   
   Ms. Hartmann's case has baffled tribunal lawyers for some time. She
   reported on the 1990s war in Yugoslavia for Le Monde and then served as
   the spokeswoman for the tribunal prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte.
   
   After leaving her job, she wrote a book, titled "Peace and Punishment,"
   and an article, parts of which angered several judges.
   
   Ms. Hartmann was convicted of contempt of court in 2009 for writing
   about how tribunal judges had agreed that sensitive records provided by
   Serbia could be used in closed sessions of the court but kept out of
   the public eye. She said that she had not revealed the contents of the
   records, but that the victims had a right to know about the deal that
   kept them confidential.
   
   Other journalists and Mrs. Del Ponte have also written about the
   negotiations over these records, which involve the minutes of the
   wartime meetings of the Supreme Defense Council led by Slobodan
   Milosevic, who was the Serbian president at the time. The records,
   which were much coveted by the tribunal prosecutors, offered insight
   into Serbia's role in the Bosnian war from 1992 to 1995.
   
   Unlike the others, Ms. Hartmann was prosecuted and convicted of
   contempt of court because of her references to the judges' confidential
   decisions. She was originally fined 7,000 euros, but the sentence was
   converted to seven days in prison. She says she stole no tribunal
   records and obtained her information from sources in Serbia.
   
   A version of this article appears in print on March 28, 2016, on page
   A6 of the New York edition with the headline: French Journalist Is
   Detained at U.N. War Crimes Tribunal. Order Reprints| Today's
   Paper|Subscribe "



War crimes
Former UN war crimes tribunal spokeswoman arrested at Karadzic hearing
http://www.dw.com/en/former-un-war-crimes-tribunal-spokeswoman-arrested-at-karadzic-hearing/a-19141977

  "An ex-spokeswoman for the former Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal was
   detained in The Hague on Thursday. The unexpected drama came shortly
   before the verdict in the trial of Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan
   Karadzic.
   
   The former Balkans correspondent for the daily "Le Monde", Florence
   Hartmann, was detained outside the tribunal building while waiting for
   the verdict handed down to Radovan Karadzic on Thursday.
   
   Two female guards tried to grab Hartmann during a TV interview, while
   she was surrounded by relatives of Karadzic's victims. The victim's
   family members attempted to shield her, prompting a short scuffle that
   ended in guards calling for back up.
   
   Hartmann is popular among Bosnian war survivors for her claims that
   Belgrade and The Hague tribunal made a deal to diminish Serbia's
   involvement in the Bosnian war. The Thursday incident, however, follows
   her conviction for contempt of court over publishing confidential
   material in her 2007 book "Peace and Punishment."
   
   The guards, backed by Dutch police, eventually managed to drag
   protesting Hartmann away and into the court building, where she briefly
   collapsed on the ground, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.
   
   Carla del Ponte says arrest 'ridiculous'
   
   From 2000 to 2006, Hartmann worked as the spokeswoman for the chief
   Hague prosecutor at the time, Carla Del Ponte. During this time, the UN
   tribunal put several top leaders from former Yugoslavia on trial,
   including ex-president of Serbia Slobodan Milosevic. The Balkan
   strongman, however, died before the verdict.
   
   Hartmann also drew attention in the Balkans by being a fluent Serbian
   speaker, one of the few among high-ranking court officials.
   
   A year after Milosevic's death in 2006, Hartmann published the book
   revealing details of two confidential court decisions during his trial.
   In 2009, she was ordered to pay a 7,000 euro ($7,820) fine, which she
   refused to do. Two years later, the UN court replaced the fine with a
   seven-day jail sentence, and asked French authorities to arrest
   Hartmann.
   
   The French Foreign Ministry refused to comply, claiming the country was
   not obligated to act on contempt charges.
   
   Hartmann's former boss and war crimes ex-prosecutor Del Ponte decried
   the Thursday arrest as "unacceptable."
   
   "That was absolutely ridiculous what happened today," Del Ponte said
   from Geneva. "What I hope is that she will be released immediately."
   
   Date 24.03.2016
   Author Darko Janjevic (FENA, Beta, AFP, Reuters, AP) "


france 24 Europe      France  | The Hague  | Yugoslavia
French journalist Florence Hartmann under 'suicide watch' after Hague arrest

© Robin van Lonkhuijsen / AFP | Florence Hartmann during her arrest at The Hague on Thursday March 24, 2016.
http://www.france24.com/en/20160327-french-journalist-florence-hartmann-suicide-watch-hague-arrest-yugoslav-war-crimes
Text by FRANCE 24 Follow france24_en on twitter
Latest update : 2016-03-27

  "A French journalist and former spokeswoman for the Yugoslav war crimes
   court at The Hague has been jailed at the tribunal's detention unit and
   placed under "suicide watch conditions" over a 2009 contempt of court
   conviction, her lawyer said Saturday.
   
   Florence Hartmann, who was sentenced on appeal to seven days in prison
   in 2009 after writing a book containing confidential court details, was
   dramatically grabbed Thursday at the tribunal's entrance as she tried
   to get in to hear the landmark verdict against former Bosnian Serb
   leader Radovan Karadzic.
   
   Hartmann's lawyer Guenael Mettraux told AFP that his client was being
   held separate from other detainees, "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".
   
   "She is isolated from other detainees and so far has only been visited
   by the French consul," he said.
   
   "I have filed applications yesterday (Friday) including one for her
   conditions of detention to be urgently modified as these measures are
   totally unnecessary, unjustified and disproportionate," Mettraux said.
   
   Hartmann, a former Balkans correspondent for French daily Le Monde, was
   grabbed by blue-shirted UN guards in front of the International
   Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia's (ICTY) entrance, where
   she once worked as the spokeswoman for former prosecutor Carla Del
   Ponte between 2000-2006.
   
   Unpaid fine
   
   She had been prosecuted in 2007 for revealing details of two
   confidential appeals chamber decisions in a book published that year.
   
   The data, which emerged during the trial of late Serbian strongman
   Slobodan Milosevic, allegedly implicated the Serbian state in the 1995
   massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, Bosnia.
   
   In 2009, Hartmann was initially fined 7,000 euros for contempt for
   disclosing confidential information in her book "Paix et Chatiment"
   (Peace and Punishment).
   
   In 2011, after Hartmann had not paid the fine, ICTY judges sentenced
   her to seven days in jail. The court asked French authorities to arrest
   her, which the French foreign ministry refused to do.
   
   Mettraux said Saturday that he has also asked "for her early release, a
   course of action even extended to war criminals convicted by the court,
   who are released after serving two-thirds of their sentence... she
   should be entitled to the same".
   
   He added that he did not expect any reaction from The Hague-based UN
   tribunal, set up in 1993 to try those accused of atrocities during the
   1990s Balkan wars, as it was closed for the Easter weekend public
   holidays.
   
   "We expect to know more on Tuesday," he said.
   
   The ICTY could not immediately be reached for comment.
   
   ICTY war crimes judges Thursday sentenced Karadzic to 40 years in jail
   for his role in Bosnia's 1992-95 war that killed some 100,000 people
   and left 2.2 million others homeless.
   
   (FRANCE 24 with AFP)
   
   Date created : 2016-03-27"

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It seems that the following book has some intricate details , which
later on became highly classified material. William Binney and other
NSA whistleblowers also fell victim to the same tragic post publication
scenario .


Paix et châtiment Broché – 7 septembre 2007
de Florence Hartmann  (Ateur)
Broché: 319 pages
Editeur : Flammarion (7 septembre 2007)
Collection : DOCS, TEMOIGNAG
Langue : Français
ISBN-10: 2081206692
ISBN-13: 978-2081206694
http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2081206692

From here wikipage  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Hartmann :

  "Florence Hartmann (born 17 February 1963) is a French journalist and
   author. During the 1990s she was a correspondent in the Balkans for the
   French newspaper Le Monde. In 1999 she published her first book,
   Milosevic, la diagonale du fou (Milosevic, the opposite of crazy),
   reissued by Gallimard in 2002. From October 2000 until October 2006 she
   was official spokesperson and Balkan adviser to Carla Del Ponte, chief
   prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
   Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
   [ ... ]
   Her book, Paix et châtiment, Les guerres secrètes de la politique et de
   la justice internationales about the politics of international justice
   and the functioning of the ICTY and the ICTR was published by Parisian
   publisher Groupe Flammarion in September 2007.[citation needed]
   [ ... ]
   On 27 August 2008, Hartmann was indicted by the Tribunal for
   disclosing, in her book, Paix et châtiment, Les guerres secrètes de la
   politique et de la justice internationales, confidential information
   pertaining to two decisions of the Tribunal approving black-outs and
   exclusions from critical historical war documents provided by Belgrade
   for the trial of the former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević and
   showing Serbia's involvement in the Srebrenica massacre.[8] Hartmann
   posited that the ICTY Appeals Chamber had used invalid legal reasoning
   to effectively censor evidence which might have implicated
   Serbia-Montenegro in the alleged commission of genocide in Bosnia and
   Herzegovina during the 1990s Balkans wars.[9]
   [ ... ]"