Ultra-nationalist Serbian leader Vojislav Seselj said Wednesday he was "proud" of the crimes UN judges convicted him of and told AFP he was "ready to repeat them".
A UN court found Seselj guilty on appeal of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, but he will remain free because of the time he has already served in detention.
"I am proud of all crimes attributed (to me) and ready to repeat them in the future," he told AFP after the ruling.
"The verdict is against the law," said Seselj, who snubbed the hearing and was not present when the verdict was read by judges in The Hague.
"The appeal court could not turn acquittal into condemnation, but only to quash it and order a retrial," he added.
The Hague-based appeals chamber reversed Seselj's acquittals for instigating persecution, deportation and other inhuman acts as crimes against humanity.
He was found guilty for an anti-Croat speech delivered in early 1990s in the village of Hrtkovci in Serbia's multiethnic northern Vojvodina region.
But Seselj said the tribunal "lied that there were systematic persecutions of Croats in Hrtkovci".
"No Croat was expelled from Serbia, all those who left exchanged their property with Serbs" forced out of Croatia at the time, Seselj said.
In March 2016 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia acquitted Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party. He is now a member of parliament.
