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But there is evidence for much more serious charges against Seselj. When fighting broke out in 1992, he became one of the three key Serb paramilitary leaders who provided the shock troops of ethnic cleansing. He recruited and commanded a rabid band of "volunteers" dubbed the Chetniks in honor of Serbia's World War II royalist antifascist squads. Dressed in natty black jackets, the Chetniks left a well-documented trail of blood as they rampaged across Croatia and Bosnia, all the while bragging they were acting under Seselj's command. They exaggerate, he says. "I just happen to have had the traditional Chetnik title of Duke assigned to me."
The blond giant wears blue business suits these days at his political headquarters in downtown Belgrade, but his pale eyes are hard as polished stones. Seselj shows no remorse as he shunts aside direct accusations. "I am personally very sure I was not involved in any war crime," he says. "I provided volunteers. I made excursions to the front to boost morale. Those are not crimes." He waves away suggestions that he is responsible for fomenting the conflict. "Rhetoric is hardly enough to start a war." If there were Serb war crimes, he says, "scavengers" and "looters" among "criminal paramilitaries" did the deeds.
But if, he says, he is guilty of war crimes, then so is Milosevic himself. The two fell out in mid-1993, says Seselj, when Milosevic realized that Seselj was turning into a serious political rival. The opportunistic Milosevic was transforming himself into a peacemaker and needed to jettison an obdurate backer of the war.
Seselj is still angry at the betrayal. He swears he can incriminate Milosevic; he has even called the tribunal and offered to appear. "They said for now they had nothing on me and wouldn't rely on statements from politicians," he sniffs. But he is certain Belgrade would kill him rather than allow him to testify. "Milosevic is afraid of me," he says. "He knows that I have certain documents that heavily compromise him, kept in safe places abroad. I will publish them if anything happens to me." He mutters that he cannot say what the documents contain: "They are the only thing that is keeping me alive."
Seselj claims he and his "volunteers" were always in service to the government. "Milosevic ordered that a barracks be given to us near Belgrade; he provided our uniforms, our weapons, our equipment. When we needed buses to go to the front, he provided them; and when our volunteers died, they were buried with official military ceremony." He says he had the "closest possible relationship with Milosevic."
Paramilitary units, says Seselj, knew they were doing the bidding of Milosevic, but his leadership was always cagey. He did not issue direct war commands; he merely made his "intentions" plain and "requested" that his subordinates devise ways to carry them out. "I never heard Milosevic order ethnic cleansing," says Seselj, "but I can give examples of indirect invitations to do such things." The President passed those invitations through the secret police, says Seselj. They in turn invited the paramilitaries to "liberate" areas Serbia coveted or "defend" Serb-minority towns. Seselj admits his unit fought under such directives, but says that as soon as the legitimate "liberation" of a town was complete, his boys would depart. "We never took part in the looting," he insists.