Florence Hartmann was found guilty by the United Nations court, based in The Hague, of "willfully interfering with the tribunal's administration of justice."

The French national wrote about confidential documents related to the war crimes trial of the late Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Yugoslavia, in her 2007 book "Peace and Punishment" and in a 2008 article. In her works, Hartmann argued that information implicating the Serbian state in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys was not made public after the judges granted Serbian requests for the details to remain confidential.

Hartmann's defense claimed that all of the information contained in her writings had already been published by others. While Judge Bakone Moloto said the court had taken into account that some of the data had already been made public, he ruled that as a spokeswoman for the prosecution, Hartmann was "well aware of what the confidentiality of a decision entailed" and yet revealed the information "in knowing violation of a court order."

"The chamber has found that the accused's conduct may deter sovereign states from cooperating with the tribunal were the provision of evidential material is concerned," he said.

Hartmann had covered the Balkan wars in the 1990s as a reporter for the French newspaper Le Monde. She was the spokeswoman for the tribunal's chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte from 2000 to 2006.

hf/AFP/dpa/Reuters
Editor: Nancy Isenson