REQUEST WITH SUMMONS

To Mr. Claude Jorda

P.O. Box 13888

2501 EW the Hague

To Mr. Richard May

P.O. Box 13888

2501 EW the Hague

to Mr. Hans Holthuis

P.O. Box 13888

2501 EW the Hague

to Ms Carla Del Ponte

P.O. Box 13888

2501 EW the Hague

10 January 2002

Dear Sirs/Madam,

By letter, dated 30 october 2001, I wrote to you as regards Mr. Milosevic' human rights violations, inter alia:

"Because there exists no definite dividing line between the prosecutor and the judiciary in the structure of the so-called tribunal and because as a consequence of this build up it is unclear who is finally responsible for the matters raised in this letter, I write this letter to all of you.
 

Inspired by the newest invention of the prosecutor in the latest 'Croatian' indictment about joint commander respon­sibility in the framework of a 'joint criminal enterpri­se', I think I can consider the herewith relevant respon­sibilities with regard to the so-called tribunal also as 'a joint enterprise'."

With respect to this question Mr. Hans Holthuis, Registrar of the tribunal, responded by fax, dated 20 november 2001, inter alia:

"I have been requested by President Jorda and Presiding Judge May to respond to your letter, since the matters you raise fall within the responsibility of the Registry."

Nevertheless, I have to stress that it is completely unaccep­table that the preservation and safeguarding of human rights with respect to your so-called tribunal might be settled exclusively on the level of the registrary of this tribunal, i.e. merely on the level of the tribunal's administration.

It definitely cannot be a matter to decide on this level.

Though I take note of the fact that it really is the stand of your tribunal that such an important question is to be dealt with on this level !

So I address again this request to all of you.

As you know, on 20 december 2001 there is now filed an provi­si­onal application on behalf of Mr. Milosevic to the European Court of Human Right with respect to human right violations he has to suffer.

This provisional application is, according to our client's orders, made and filed by the follo­wing lawyers:

Mr. N.M.P. Steijnen, Zeist, the Netherlands

Mr. Z. Tomanovic, Belgrade, Serbia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Mr.Ch. Black, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada

Mr. D.M. Ognjanovic, Belgrade, Serbia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Professor Mr. A. Tremblay, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Professor Mr. A. Bernardini, Rome, Italy

Professor Mr. M.N. Kouznetsov, Moskow, Federal Republic of Russia.

This provisional application being the basic document to implement further by our joint efforts.

During the past months your tribunal has been repeatedly warned by me that this embodiment was severely violating Mr. Milosevic' human rights by not allowing me - just like any of my collegues mentioned above - to correspond unmonitored with Mr. Milosevic and to have a free, unimpeded and unmonito­red access to him.

I have been always very unambiguous and open to your tribunal with respect to my position concerning Mr. Milosevic.
 

So I have also repeatedly stressed to Mr. Rohde that I was ordered by mr. Milosevic to prepare, as his lawyer in a co-operation with other lawyers, proceedings instituted before the European Court of Human Rigts against the consistent and multiple human rights violations he has to suffer.

However, till this very moment never such a free and unmonito­red communication with Mr. Milosevic, and such a free, unim­peded and unmonitored access to him, was allowed by your tribunal.
 

Neither to me, nor to any of my above mentioned collegues.

Though, as your tribunal has been always well aware that:

1.all of us are acting as legal advisers of his own choos­ing with respect to his illegal deprivation of freedom and his position with respect to the tribunal;

2.since the very first moment of his abduction and his detention into the Netherlands a number of us are moreover acting as his legal advi­sers and as attorneys repre­senting him in various domestic legal proceedings, into the State of the Ne­ther­lands as well as in Yugoslavia;

3.already since several months we are also ordered by Mr. Milosevic to prepare as his lawyers the filing an application to the European Court of Human Rights.

All these assignments were to be considered by the tribunal as imperative to allow a free and unmonitored communication and access to our client.
 

However, your tribunal acted completely the opposite way and declared any access to Mr. Milosevic for us to be a good­ness, never allowing either me, or any other lawyer, any confident communication or correspondence with our client.

A favour, only to be granted with complete arbitrariness by your tribunal.

Mr. Milosevic's legal advisers and his appointed attorneys in domestic cases never being sure about getting access to him or not.

Like Mr. Jorda wrote me, by letter dated 21 August 2001 in response to my demand to get a sure and confident communicati­on with my client in order to prepare Mr. Milosevic' case against the State of the Netherlands:

"I wish to inform you that the rights of the detainees to receive visits fall within the (..) Rules 60 to 66 of the Rules of Detention."

This section of the so-called Rules regulates the communicati­on with friends and other non-privileged visitors.

So the message is plain: all legal advisers and attorneys representing Mr. Milosevic in domestic legal proceedings are dependent of the whims of the tribunal's administration to get communication with him or not.

And when communication may be allowed, it is a very limited one in time and a moni­tored one.

And at the same time we have no other choice than to put up with all kinds of harassments by your so-called tribunal.

Like for instance experienced by me, when I was scheduled for a visit to Mr. Milosevic on 22 November 2001.

According to the arrangement with the registrary I was schedu­led on 14.00 h.

But arriving on that time I was told by the desk officials that I was not on the visitor's list at all, so they couldn't let me in.

I took me hours to overcome these obstacles and finally there was only a quarter of an hour left to communicate with my client.

That same afternoon I had a talk with the commanding officer of the detention unit as well as with the commanding official of the registrary.

The first one told me that it was not his fault that I was absent on the visitors list, since the regis­trary had only mentioned on the visitors notification the date of my visit and not the time. He handed over to me the notification form in order to show this.

However, the commanding official of the registrary told me that this was nonsense, since there was never a exact point of time mentioned on this kind of notifi­cations. 

So neither anybody took any responsibility for this serious embaras­sment, nor I was able to hold someone responsible for this.

And then the experiences of my collegue Mr. Black with your so-called tribunal.

By letter dated 16 october 2001 my collegue was banned from any further communication with Mr. Milosevic by the legal officer of the registrary, since an interview with Mr. Milose­vic was published in a German magazine and since:

"It appears that this interview covers most, if not all, of the questions you personally asked Milosevic in a recent telephone conversation dated October3, 2001.

Originally, when you requested permission for the above-mentioned communication, both you and Milosevic indicated the purpose to be for legal advising. However, based upon the record of the conversation, it did not concern any legal advice.

This appears to be the accused's second violation of the Detention Rules. He has been previously warned that a further breach of the Detention Rules can result in a total withdrawal of his communication privileges. As for you, Mr. Black, this is also the second time you have violated the Rules of Detention. As a reminder, the first time, you removed documents from the detention facility without following the proper procedure.

As a result of this Detention Rule breach, your privilege to communicate with the detainee is hereby withdrawn. No further communication with the the accused will be permit­ted untill further notice."

So my collegue Mr. Black was completely banned by your tribu­nal, as the umpteenth variant cooked up by your tribunal in order to isolate Mr. Milosevic as much as possible from his legal advisers and his lawyers in domestic proceedings.

This policy culminated in the general expulsion of all legal advisers of Mr. Milosevic of his own choice and in the as­signment by your tribunal of two 'official legal advisers', Mr. Clark and Mr. Livingston.

This manoeuvre was undertaken by your tribunal, being fully aware of the fact that this procedure would be completely unacceptable.

Not only for Mr. Milosevic himself, but also for the appointed 'legal advisers', assigned without any further consultation by your tribunal and without even have been asked for their consent.

So it was quite predictable for your tribunal that this move would end up into a state that, Mr. Milosevic and the persons concerned strongly rejecting this manoeuvre, our client would be stripped of all legal advisers.

Exactly as was aimed by your so-called tribunal, in its conti­nuous aspiration to isolate Mr. Milosevic as much as possible from any legal advise.

And this highly predictable outcome came through by the ful­fil­ment of the rejection by Mr. Milosevic and by the persons concer­ned.

Mr. Ramsey Clark wrote in his letter to Mr. May of your so-called tribunal, dated 17 November 2001:

"I have received a copy of your order dated November 15, 2001 in which I deemed to be a legal advisers to President Milosevic.

I am not able to accept this designation becau­se it is clear that President Milosevic has not himself deemed me to be his legal advisor.

You note that President Milosevic has stated that he does not intend to appoint counsel "and, to date, has not desig­nated any legal advisor", and continue by noting that on 26 October 2001 he requested the Registry to permit him to meet with me and John Livingston.

You fail to note President Milosevic had requested mee­tings with a number of other lawyers and again has not designated any legal adviser.

President Milosevic has a right not only under the rules of the tribunal, but a fundamental and universal right in inter­national law and the laws if nearly all nations "..to communi­cate with counsel of his choosing."

The Registrar has effectively frustrated that right since President Milosevic was illegally surendered to the ICTY.

Lawyers have spent weeks in the Hague waiting to see President Milosevic at his request without success.

With a single exeption, none have been free to communica­te with President Milosevic with the essential guaranteed protection that the communication is confidential.

That exception was by your intervention with the Registrar on 27 July 2001 in which you recommended to the registrar that I "be allowed to visit the accused for a reasonable time as requested, for legal consultation with the right of confidentiality."
 

Thereafter I met with President Milosevic with an assuran­ce of confidentiality.

Following that meeting and pursuant to it I transmitted legal materials for him to consider in his defense.
 

The Registrar withheld these materials from President Milosevic to the last day before a status conference (..).
 

Incredibly, the Registrar then opened the package of legal materials I had sent President Milosevic which were clear­ly marked as confidential attorney materials to be opened only in the presence of President Milosevic and claimed the earlier recognition of the right to confidentiality was only temporary and had expired.

This was an incredibly arrogant violation of the right to counsel accomplished by deception.

On October 11, 2001 and November 2, 2001, I came to the Ne­therlands and not "at the expense of the International Tribunal" as your order stipulates, having requested the right to meet with President Milosevic, and was rejected.

These two occasions are minor compared with efforts of other lawyers.

The Tribunal through the acts of the registrar has syste­mati­cally violated President Milosevic right to communica­te with counsel of his choice for five months.
 

(...)
 

I urge the tribunal to act immediately to protect the rights of President Milosevic to communicate freely with counsel of his own choosing.

His ability to prepare his defense has been severely damaged by the tactics of the registrar designed to viola­te his rights and damage his defense."

So this confirms the earlier conclusion that, as it was deli­berately aimed by your tribunal, the highly predictable outco­me of this manoeuvre has been that all legal advisers are now definitively withheld from Mr. Milosevic.

Not only in the contact with his legal advisers but even in the communication between Mr. Milosevic and his attorneys representing him in his domes­tic legal procee­dings, from the beginning the ex­chan­ge of documents was com­ple­tely prohibited by your embo­di­ment.

This ban forms the final piece to make any defence in whate­ver legal proceedings Mr. Milosevic is concerned impos­sible.

Penal proceedings undertaken against him in his home country Yugoslavia as well as legal proceedings undertaken by himself here in the Netherlands alike.

For how can anybody build up a decent defence in whatever case under such conditions?

By letter, dated 30 October 2001 to your embodiment, I mentio­ned that I, driven to the wall by your deliberate policy of isolating Mr. Milosevic from all his attorneys and legal advi­sers in no matter what kind of legal proceedings, have tried to open up, as a last resort, a direct communication line with my client by post.

I brought forward that I wrote Mr. Milosevic letters by regis­tered mail on September 18, September 24, October 2 and Octo­ber 18, of which letters he never received both the first ones, the very first with a great number of annexes.
 

And that both the last ones he got only after I had made know my inten­tion to visit my client to your tribu­nal's functiona­ries.

I wrote you in this letter of 30 October 2001 regarding this point of the disappearance of my legal documents:

"So I strongly protest against this new appaling interfe­rence by the tribunal's administration with my client's basic right on a decent defence and against this pernici­ous attempt even to deprive him of the last possibility to have a regular contact with his lawyer, in order to prepa­re his defence in the appeal-case against the State of the Netherlands."

There was no response at all by your tribunal on my demand to investigate seriously the disappearance of my letters send by registered mail to Mr. Milosevic.

And further I wrote in this letter:

"During my visit to Mr. Milosevic I was also confronted with an explicit injunction to hand over any document of paper whatsoever.
 

Can you tell me how it would be possible to prepare a defence in whatsoever case without enabling the detainee and his lawyer to exchange papers and documents ?

It is impossible to interpret this prohibition as some­thing else than a deliberate final blow in order to ob­struct a decent defence for mr. Milosevic against the Netherlands, in which case also the legitimacy of the so-called tribunal is involved.

I am simply dumbfounded by the fact that my collegue Mr. Ch. Black now has been blacklisted by the tribunal's offi­cials and is not permitted any further communication with Mr. Milosevic, as he is accused of 'discussing world events' with him, which comments later appeared in a Berlin magazine.
 

What an extremely bold sample of medieval inquisition methods this ban represents !

Mr. Black, who is consistently submitted to the same regime as I am, just like all other legal advisers, assig­ned by Mr. Milosevic."

Your tribunal, fully aware of its own absolute power and conscious to reign supremely over all people in its grasp beyond any control, also not deigned to respond seriously to this very serious complaints.

And restricted its answer to the comment that apparently I didn't know my place !

Threatening to incite the Dutch Bar against me.

After the succesful expulsion of all legal advisers, your tribu­nal has apparently decided to focus its attention on the definiti­ve drive out of the attorneys representing him in domestic legal proceedings.

To start with me.

Since mid-December 2001 I have two times requested access to Mr. Milosevic as soon as possible.
 

Two times your tribunal told me that this request was under consideration.

However, till now your so-called tribunal left me without any further reaction.

So the last phase in the tribunal's tactics of isolating Mr. Milosevic of all his legal advisers has clearly come.

However, nota bene very well:
 

By these tactics of your tribunal, using all means in order to frustrate as much as possible any legal advise by lawyers of his own choosing, you also already have harmed irreparably
 

Mr. Milosevic' basic right to prepare a proper defence as re­gards his indictments by your tribunal.

For it is clear to everybody that by this malicious conduct

his ability to prepare his defense as regards your so-called indictments has been severely damaged.

This makes that you have forfeited also along this line every alleged right to sentence Mr. Milosevic.

Every day you continue on this course, you make things even worse for yourself.

Already by letter dated 6 August 2001 I requested with summons

a free and unimpeded contact with my client Mr. Milosevic, which was refused by the earlier mentioned letter from Mr. Jorda, dated 21 August 2001.

Again I demand the right to communicate and correspond freely and unmonitored with Mr. Milosevic, for myself and for my collegue-lawyers, assigned to repre­sent him in his case before the European Court.

This time also with reference to Article 3, para 1 and 2 (c) of the European Agreement relating to persons participating in proceedings of the European Commission and Court of Human Rights, stating:

"1. The Contracting parties shall respect the right of the persons referred to in paragraph 1 of Article 1 of this Agreement to correspond freely with the Commisssion and the Court.

and:

"2. As regards persons under detention, the exercise of this right shall in particular imply that:
 

c. such persons shall have the right to correspond, and consult out of hearing of other persons, with a lawyer qualified to appear before the courts of the country where they are detained in regard to an application to the commission, or any proceedings resulting therefrom."

I request you to inform me of your assent to this request by fax or e-mail.

If you fail to inform me of your express assent to this re­quest by 15 January  2001, at the latest, I will assume that you apparently want to interfere again with our client's right to free and unimpeded contact with his lawyers, representing him in this specific legal actions before the European Court of Human Rights and that you also want to place obstacles in our client's way in this respect.

In that case, I will, without any further summons and corres­pondence institute interim injunction proceeding against the ICTY on behalf of our client before the President of the District Court in the Hague.

This in order to force your institution to respect this fun­damental human right of our client.

For the time being, however, we assume that such legal action from our part will not be necessary.

Yours sincerely

Mr. N.M.P. Steijnen