Court to rule on Seselj acquittal

4 May 2011 Last updated at 03:40 GMT Vojislav Seselj says prosecutors do not have enough evidence to convict him The UN war crimes tribunal at the Hague is due to decide whether there are grounds to acquit Serbian ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj.

Mr Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, is charged with 14 counts relating to the Croatian and Bosnian wars of the 1990s.

He has pleaded innocent and filed for acquittal and compensation in March.

While he does not deny making nationalist speeches, he says they did not constitute war crimes.

The BBC's Balkans correspondent Mark Lowen says no defendant has ever been acquitted in the 18-years the tribunal has been running.

Mr Seselj surrendered to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2003.

He is accused of forming a joint criminal enterprise with the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to "ethnically cleanse" large parts of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia's northern Vojvodina region.

The charges against him include murder, torture, sexual assault, forced transportation and destruction of property.

But earlier this year he filed a motion under a specific court rule arguing that the prosecution's evidence was insufficient to support a conviction.

Mr Seselj's Serbian Radical Party has been campaigning for him to be released in time for parliamentary elections next year.

Some fear that if he were released and return to Serbian politics, he could once again galvanise the far right at a time when the country's pro-Western government is trying to move closer to its goal of European Union membership, our correspondent says.

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Court upholds Facebook settlement

11 April 2011 Last updated at 23:42 GMT The Winklevosses say Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for a social network site A US appeals court has ruled that twin brothers who say the idea for Facebook was stolen from them by Mark Zuckerberg cannot back out of a settlement deal they made with the website.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss had asked in January to re-open a $65m (£42m) legal settlement signed in 2008.

The twins say Mr Zuckerberg stole their idea after he was hired by them to code their ConnectU site in 2003.

The court said it saw no reason to re-open their case against Facebook.

Facebook has rejected the brothers' claims.

"The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace," three Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges said in the ruling.

"At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached," the judges said.

'Stolen code'

The Winklevosses have argued that Mr Zuckerberg, who attended Harvard with them, took the code for their social networking website and launched Facebook with it in 2004.

Facebook agreed to a 2008 settlement to end "rancorous litigation" but did not admit Mr Zuckerberg had taken the twins' idea.

The Winklevosses received $20m in cash and $45m worth of stock valued at $36 per share in the deal.

"For whatever reason, they now want to back out... Like the district court, we see no basis for allowing them to do so," the judges said, referring to the settlement deal.

Jerome Falk, a lawyer representing the Winklevosses, said he disagreed with the ruling and that his legal team would file for a rehearing within the next two weeks.

"In my judgment, the opinion raises extremely significant questions of federal law that merit review by the entire Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals," Mr Falk said in a statement.

Mr Zuckerberg has always maintained that Facebook was his creation.

The lawsuit over Facebook was dramatised in the film The Social Network, which was nominated for best picture at the Oscars.

Facebook is the world's biggest social network with more than 500m users, and Mr Zuckerberg is one of the world's youngest billionaires.

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