Petar Jojić (; born 12 July 1938) is a Serbian politician. He has served several terms in the National Assembly of Serbia as a member of the far-right Serbian Radical Party and was justice minister for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1999 to 2000.
Private career
Jojić is a lawyer based in Pančevo in the Serbian province of Vojvodina.
Political career
Yugoslav parliamentarian
Jojić was elected to the Assembly of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's Chamber of Citizens in the 1996 election. The Radical Party won sixteen seats and initially served in opposition to a governing alliance led by the Socialist Party of Serbia and its Montenegrin allies.
Yugoslav cabinet minister
The Radical Party joined the government of Yugoslavia in August 1999, shortly after the conclusion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)'s bombing of Yugoslavia in the context of the Kosovo War. Six members of the Radical Party became cabinet ministers in the government of Momir Bulatović on 12 August 1999, including Jojić in the justice portfolio.
Kosovo and Metohija
In late August 1999, Jojić accused the international military and civilian missions operating in Kosovo and Metohija (Kosovo Force (KFOR) and the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)) of failing to honour the terms of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 on the breakaway province. He argued that Yugoslav authorities were justified in insisting on a Yugoslav army and Serbian police presence at the main border crossings, stating that over one hundred thousand guerrilla fighters had crossed the border from Albania into Kosovo. He also accused the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Germany of being accomplices in acts of violence directed against the Kosovo Serb population.
Jojić later indicated Yugoslavia's strong opposition to the creation of the Kosovo Protection Corps as an officially sanctioned successor group to the Kosovo Liberation Army. On one occasion, he said that UNMIK leader Bernard Kouchner "does not respect any law, either international law or local law ... and has formed an army of Albanian terrorists."
Concerning the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Jojić remarked that its most important consequences were those pertaining to the breakdown of international law and the violation of Yugoslavia's legal status as a sovereign state and United Nations member.
Extraditions of accused war criminals
Jojić met with representatives of the Association for Criminal Law and Criminology of Yugoslavia on 30 August 1999; the group concluded that the country's constitution and law on criminal procedure did not permit the extradition of Yugoslav civilians to any external country or organization. Jojić later said that he would "personally never allow any citizen in Yugoslavia to be delivered to the so-called court of injustice in The Hague," referring to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In April 2000, he urged the United Nations Security Council to release former Bosnian Serb leader Momčilo Krajišnik from custody in The Hague, saying that he had been arrested "in a terrorist fashion."
On May 24, 2000, Jojić released a twenty-five-page open letter to the international tribunal that, among other things, described the court as "not an international legal institution but a criminal organization that consists of mercenaries, spies, scumbags, America's and NATO's servants," and accused chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte of "running the dungeon which, like the worst whore, you have sold out to the Americans and to which you bring innocent Serbs by force, by kidnapping and murder." This document was widely reported in the international press and has since attained a status of notoriety for its strongly undiplomatic language.
Yugoslav law and related matters
Days after his appointment as justice minister, Jojić warned leaders of a planned opposition rally in Belgrade that the state would respond with "all available means" if protesters committed any acts of violence. While he advised opposition leaders (some of whom he described as "Western stooges") that they had a legal right to hold the rally, he added that state institutions would be obligated to take "timely and effective" measures if "the smallest incident, or an attempt to instigate violence" occurred. This was widely interpreted at an attempt at intimidation, though in the event the opposition rally took place without incident on August 19, 1999.