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Serbian police have prevented a Serbian far-right leader convicted of war crimes from returning to an ethnically-mixed northern village where he spurred ethnic hatred during the 1990s' Balkan war.

Dozens of policemen sealed off Hrtkovci on Sunday, blocking Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj and his supporters from reaching the village and rallying there.

The Radicals briefly gathered by the police cordons before dispersing. A squabble was reported with some liberal protesters who came to denounce Seselj.

The U.N. war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia last month sentenced Seselj to ten years in prison over his 1992 speech in Hrtkovci that resulted in the deportations of dozens of ethnic Croats from the village.

Seselj remains free because he served his sentence while in custody during the trial.