Mr. Claude Jorda, President
ICTY
The Hague
The Netherlands

Esteemed Mr. Jorda,

We have received with great dissatisfaction and embitterment your reply to our October 13 letter. With regret we note your apparent unwillingness to see the seriousness of the problem we have drawn your attention to. That way you may become accomplice in the crime being committed against President Milosevic under the auspices of the tribunal you preside. We hope we shouldn't remind you that as President, you are the most responsible for the legality of the ICTY works.

The basic principle of the criminal law endorses that an ill man can not be put on trial. President Milosevic is having a serious heart condition and his state of health is being ruined on a daily basis by the way the process is being conducted, with hundreds of thousands pages of documents and more than a thousand of tapes submitted by the prosecution, with no condition to prepare for facing hundreds of irrelevant or false witnesses sent by the prosecution. With the lack of basic living conditions, such as the possibility to breathe fresh air, to have regular meals and regular and sufficient sleep, it becomes completely clear which factors cause the deterioration of the President Milosevic's health.

Regarding your reference to the Trial Chamber III March 6 decision on provisional release, implying perhaps that the issue can not be discussed again, we are obliged to underline again that President Milosevic's state of health seriously deteriorated exactly since that time. For the reason of his illness the proceedings had to be suspended several times. These are the facts that must be taken into consideration.

We are also obliged to point the untruthfulness of your claim that President Slobodan Milosevic receives "close medical attention of a high quality". As a matter of fact, the truth is quite the opposite - he receives practically no medical care, especially not of the high quality, unless you consider appropriate for a person with serious heart condition to be seen only once in a week, and not by a cardiologist, but by an ordinary doctor, who only checks his blood pressure. In that sense we recall once again the First Principle of Medical Ethics from the UN General Assembly Resolution No. 37/194 of December 18, 1982, which says: "Health personnel, particularly physicians, charged with the medical care of prisoners and detainees, have a duty to provide them with protection of their physical and mental health and treatment of disease of the same quality and standard as is afforded to those who are not imprisoned or detained." The same is stipulated by the Article 6 of the Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials (UN General Assembly Resolution 34/169 of December 17, 1979) provisions of which established the obligations for you as President of ICTY. Besides, the provisions of the World Medical Association Declaration on the Rights of the Patient (Lisbon, 1981; Bali, 1995) guarantee the right of every person without discrimination to "choose freely and change his/her physician and hospital or health service institution" (Principle 2). The will of President Slobodan Milosevic is to be treated by Yugoslav doctors and institutions, so you are obliged to enable with that by deciding that he has to be cured in Yugoslavia.

We request once again your immediate decision that President Slobodan Milosevic has to be cured in Yugoslavia. Any other decision will bear direct responsibility for imperiling his life.

If there wouldn't be appropriate decision of your side in the following days, we will be, with regret, forced to make further moves, but this time towards the international and French bodies in charge of human rights protection and lawyers' ethics. This will be followed by activating all legal means to stop the crime and protect rights of President Milosevic.

Belgrade, December 12, 2002

On behalf of the Freedom Association

Bogoljub Bjelica, President