4 September 2001 – Towards the end of October 2001 a hearing will be held before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg concerning the application by relatives of four RTS employees who were killed, and one employee who was injured, when NATO forces attacked the Radio Television Serbia (RTS) building in Belgrade on the 23rd of April 1999. They will be represented by members of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and lawyers from Great Britain and the USA. The applicants request compensation for the violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. They claim that seventeen States which are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as well as signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights failed to protect the right to life of the five victims, which is their obligation under that convention. The case is brought against seventeen nations: Belgium, Great Britain, Greece, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary, Germany, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Turkey, France, Holland, the Czech Republic and Spain. The remaining two members of NATO, the USA and Canada, are not party to the European Convention.
The applicants claim that the designation of the RTS building as a military target was illegal according to international law and against the European Convention.
The Court has instructed the respondent States to reply to some questions concerning the admissibility of the petition. Great Britain responded on behalf of the majority of the respondents on the 2nd of May 2001, while France, Poland and Hungary submitted their own responses. The respondent States oppose the petition for a number of reasons and claim that the Court lacks jurisdiction. Representatives for the applicants submitted their responses to these objections on the 3rd of September 2001. The Grand Chamber will decide on the arguments of both sides following a verbal debate by the parties’ representatives.
The applicants are the parents of Ksenija Banković, Nebojša Stojanović, Darko Stoimenovski, the wife of Milan Joksimović, who all perished in the attack, and the injured Dragan Šuković. Heading the team of representatives for the victims is Tony Fisher, of the firm Fisher, Johns and Greenwood in Colchester, England. Vojin Dimitrijević and Tatjana Papić of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, Prof. Kevin Boyle and Prof. Francois Hampson of Great Britain and Prof. Hurst Hannum of Tufts University in Cambridge, USA will all appear before the Court. Further information can be provided by the Belgrade Center for Human Rights and the aforementioned legal firm in Colchester (tel: +44 1206 578 282, fax: +44 1206 760 282).
