17 Facts About Florence Hartmann

Florence Hartmann was born on 17 February 1963 and is a French journalist and author.

In March 2016, Florence Hartmann was arrested while reporting at the tribunal building, and forced to serve out her sentence.

Florence Hartmann worked for eleven years for the French daily Le Monde as a journalist in charge of the Balkan desk.

From October 2000 until October 2006, Florence Hartmann was official spokesperson and Balkan adviser to Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the ICTY at The Hague.

Florence Hartmann was the first journalist to discover in October 1992 the existence and location of a mass grave at Ovcara containing the remains of 263 people who were taken from Vukovar's hospital to a nearby farm and killed on 20 November 1991 by Serb forces.

On 10 December 2011, Florence Hartmann was given a lifetime achievement award for her contribution to the protection and promotion of human rights by the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.

On 27 August 2008, Florence Hartmann was indicted by the Tribunal for disclosing, in her book, Paix et chatiment, Les guerres secretes de la politique et de la justice internationales, confidential information pertaining to two decisions of the Tribunal approving blackouts and exclusions from critical historical war documents provided by Belgrade for the trial of the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and showing Serbia's involvement in the Srebrenica massacre.

Florence 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.

Florence Hartmann was convicted on these grounds of violating two appellate orders dated 20 September 2005 and 6 April 2006 issued in the Slobodan Milosevic case before the ICTY.

On 24 September 2009, Florence Hartmann launched an appeal against the conviction.

On 19 July 2011, the ICTY Appeals Chamber dismissed all the grounds of appeal advanced by Florence Hartmann and confirmed the conviction, limiting it exclusively to the "disclosure of the legal reasoning of the two impugned confidential decisions".

In March 2011, prior to the issuing of the appeal judgement against Florence Hartmann, the impugned confidential decisions criticized by Florence Hartmann were turned down.

In reaction to Florence Hartmann's conviction by the ICTY, several international NGOs have criticized the ICTY for hiding its "legal reasoning" while the publicity of criminal proceedings is a general principle of criminal and international law which aim is to guarantee the transparency and public control of judicial proceedings.

The French government refused to extradite Florence Hartmann and informed the ICTY of this refusal on 27 December 2011.

On 24 March 2016, Florence Hartmann was arrested by UN guards as she gave an interview near the war crimes tribunal building.

Florence Hartmann was granted early release on 29 March 2016.

The book L'affaire Srebrenica: Le Sang De La Realpolitik by Florence Hartmann, was published by Editions Don Quichotte, Paris, on 7 July 2015.