MOSCOW, November 29 - RAPSI. The Appeals Chamber has upheld the sentence handed down to the leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Seselj, by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in October 2011, the ICTY's official website reads.

Sheshel was sentenced to 18 months in prison for contempt of court. This is the second sentence issued to the politician for contempt of court: the ICTY had earlier sentenced him to 15 months in prison for the same offence; in addition, last June he was sentenced to two years in prison on the same count.

Seselj was accused of contempt of court for divulging information on court-protected witnesses in cases regarding military crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

The court repeatedly demanded that Seselj should take down four books from his website and other documents containing information about the witnesses.

Seselj voluntarily gave himself up to the ICTY in February 2003. The trial over his case started in November 2007. The ICTY has charged Seselj with persecuting civilians in the early 1990s for political, racial and religious reasons. He is suspected of illegal deportations, inhumane actions, murder, torture, violence, destroying villages without just cause and looting in Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.

Seselj was tried for these crimes in March.

The judges are expected to pronounce his sentence next year.