Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic continues to contest the authority of the UN war crimes tribunal and will ask a Dutch court to rule on whether his arrest in Yugoslavia was legal, a lawyer advising him said Thursday.
Canadian lawyer Christopher Black said the action will be launched "to contest the legality of Milosevic's arrest in Yugoslavia and the legality of his detention in the UN war crimes tribunal detention unit here in the Netherlands."
Milosevic has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the 1998-1999 Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanians in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo.
UN prosecutors have said they intend to also indict the former head of state for war crimes committed in Bosnia and Croatia.
Black told a news conference in Amsterdam that the action on behalf of Milosevic would be filed in a Dutch court in a few weeks.
According to Black's colleague, Andre Tremblay, Dutch law includes a provision that allows a person to contest his detention if during the arrest, the laws of the country where the arrest took place were not respected.
Black, who heads up the legal arm of the International Committee for the Defense of Slobodan Milosevic, called the former president's transfer to The Hague from Yugoslavia on June 28 an "outright kidnapping".
Milosevic refused counsel for his hearings before the tribunal at his initial appearance last week, charging that the court is illegal because it was not appointed by the UN General Assembly. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was created by the UN Security Council in 1993.
Black said he would ask for Milosevic's release on those grounds.
Tremblay called Milosevic a "political prisoner" and said the Serb nationalist had "no trust whatsoever in the tribunal", which he characterized as the "legal branch of the oppressor".
He said Milosevic had asked Black to act as his agent and instruct the Dutch lawyers launching the legal action. He would not name the Dutch legal team "for security reasons".
The team would fight the legality of the arrest before the Dutch court, the European Commission and the UN General Assembly, Tremblay said.
Black visited with the former Yugoslav president for two hours on Monday. "He's quite relaxed and has a clean conscience," the lawyer said. "He is never going to plead guilty to something he didn't do and will fight to his last breath to prove he is innocent."
The Canadian lawyers said their statements "reflect the words and sentiment of Milosevic" as he expressed them during the meeting in the ICTY detention center.
Black would not say if the former Yugoslav president would continue to represent himself before the ICTY. He added that he was not being paid for his work for Milosevic at the moment and was hoping for financial support from "the Serb diaspora" and from within Yugoslavia – AMSTERDAM (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
