Milosevic team eye court challenge

Mirjana Markovic, wife of Slobodan Milosevic, attends a session of the Yugoslav federal parliament in Belgrade

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is to take his case against his arrest by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in a Dutch court, it was announced on Thursday.

An international support group said on Thursday that it was seeking to stop the U.N. court trying Milosevic and to have his handover by Belgrade declared illegal, said Reuters.

But a lawyer backing the move said the chances of securing the former Yugoslav leader's release looked slim.

Canadian lawyer Christopher Black, who visited Milosevic in U.N. detention at a Dutch prison earlier this week, told Reuters the chances of securing the ousted leader's release were "probably not that good" but "these things have to be tried."

Milosevic says he does not recognise the U.N. tribunal, established by the Security Council in 1993, which plans to try him on charges of crimes against humanity.

"An action will be commenced in Dutch courts in a very short time...to contest the legality of his arrest in Yugoslavia and the legality of his detention by the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia)," the committee of writers, lawyers and intellectuals told a news conference in Amsterdam on Thursday.

The International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, which includes British playwright Harold Pinter and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, said Dutch lawyers planned to submit its court challenge within four weeks.

Previous attempts by war crimes suspects facing trial at The Hague to challenge the jurisdiction of the U.N. court have failed and a U.N. spokesman said the tribunal was "not overly concerned" at the Milosevic challenge.

Milosevic has been visited by Black as well as by a Belgrade attorney, who had been defending him on domestic corruption charges in Belgrade, since his transfer to the U.N.'s Scheveningen detention unit.

Milosevic is also likely to be visited by Ramsey Clark, who has received permission to visit.

"We have said he (Clark) can visit. We just don't know when he intends to visit," tribunal spokesman Jim Landale told Reuters.

Clark has previously defended a Saudi bomber of a U.S. embassy and an elderly Rwandan clergyman fighting extradition from the United States to face genocide charges.