Dragomir Milosevic Transferred to Estonia
Request to serve time closer to home country turned down by tribunal.
Dragomir Milosevic Transferred to Estonia
Request to serve time closer to home country turned down by tribunal.
Former Bosnian Serb army general Dragomir Milosevic was transferred to an Estonian prison this week after the Hague tribunal rejected his request to serve out his sentence in a country closer to Serbia.
Milosevic, who commanded the Sarajevo Romanija Corps during the second half of the Bosnian war, was sentenced to 29 years in prison for his role in the 44-month sniping and shelling of Sarajevo, which ravaged the city and left thousands of civilians dead.
Like all other defendants, Milosevic stayed in the United Nations detention unit in The Hague while standing trial and awaiting the outcome of his appeal. However, once a final sentence is handed down by the appeals chamber, all detainees are transferred to another country with which the tribunal has an agreement.
After learning he would be sent to Estonia, Milosevic submitted on March 9 that it would be difficult for his wife to visit him there due to “financial constraints” and that given his advanced age of 69, he would fare better in a more “agreeable” climate.
Tribunal president Judge Patrick Robinson responded that these considerations had already been taken into account and, in any case, “there is no right conferred on an accused person to be heard on this issue”.
“Accordingly, Milosevic has no right to directly petition me with respect to the location in which he will serve his imprisonment, and the request is incompetent on this basis alone,” Judge Robinson wrote.
Milosevic surrendered to the tribunal in 2004, and his trial began in January 2007. A trial judgement was delivered in December of that year, with the appeals verdict following in November 2009.
Milosevic was transferred to Estonia on March 22.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
