Former Yugoslav president Mr Slobodan Milosevic yesterday lost a bid to challenge in the Dutch courts the legality of his detention by the UN war crimes tribunal.
A district court judge in The Hague ruled that Dutch courts were not competent to hear the case since the Netherlands had transferred legal jurisdiction to the UN court. Mr Milosevic's lawyers said they would appeal.
Mr Milosevic had sought to challenge the legality of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to obtain his immediate release from the UN jail in The Hague.
His lawyers argued that the UN court was illegal since it had not been set up by a full vote of the UN General Assembly, but on the orders of its Security Council. They said this negated the agreement between the Dutch government and the UN which granted the court international jurisdiction.
But Judge Roel Paris ruled that the UN tribunal "has been established lawfully". He said the Netherlands had transferred jurisdiction to the tribunal and its jurisdiction superseded national law.
In a reference to Mr Milosevic's claims that his human rights had been violated, the judge said the UN court was "independent and impartial" in terms of the European Treaty for the Protection of Human Rights.
The judge also ordered Mr Milosevic to pay costs of about €1590.
Afterwards, Mr Erik Olof, one of Mr Milosevic's Dutch lawyers, said that in rejecting the challenge the judge had sent a complaint about the "puppet tribunal back to that same pseudo-tribunal". It was "a return to the dark ages when legislator, judge and hangman were one and the same person".
The lawyers said they had not been given proper access to their client in preparing their case. Similar complaints have been made by lawyers from the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, which includes former US attorney-general Mr Ramsey Clark.
Mr Milosevic acted like a "stubborn, capricious child" during questioning at the UN war crimes tribunal, chief prosecutor Ms Carla Del Ponte said in an interview yesterday. Ms Del Ponte announced earlier this week that she planned also to charge Mr Milosevic with genocide for his role in the war in Bosnia and with war crimes for alleged atrocities committed in Croatia. The formal trial is not expected to begin before July 2002.