Former Yugoslav leader Mr Slobodan Milosevic has launched a bid at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to secure his release from the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
|
|
Mr Slobodan Milosevic. Photograph: Reuters.
|
Mr Milosevic, held by the UN tribunal since June on charges of spearheading Serb ethnic cleansing in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, claims his detention violates the European Convention on Human Rights.
His complaints are directed against his arrest and detention and the proceedings currently conducted against him in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, a spokesman for the human rights court said.
Mr Milosevic is seeking to secure his freedom and financial damages in the legal action against the Netherlands, which hosts the United Nations tribunal, Milosevic's Dutch lawyer Mr Nico Steijnen said.
A Dutch court in August threw out a challenge by Mr Milosevic against his detention by the tribunal, which was established by a UN Security Council resolution in May 1993.
Mr Milosevic has dismissed the war crimes charges against him as "monstrous", branded his handover by Belgrade reformers to the tribunal as kidnapping and accused the UN tribunal of persecuting him.
He has refused to enter pleas to charges of genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnian war and crimes against humanity in Croatia in 1991-92 and in Kosovo in 1999.