THE HAGUE — Beyond the brick towers of a Dutch prison just east of here is a compound where Congolese warlords, Serbian militia leaders and a former Liberian president accused of instigating murder, rape and enslavement are confined in two detention centers.

There they live in private cells stocked like college dormitories, with wooden bookcases, television sets and personal computers. There is a gym, a trainer, a spiritual room and a common kitchen where some former enemies trade recipes and dine on cevapi, or Balkan meatballs.

Three warlords are also receiving free legal aid at a monthly cost of about 35,000 euros, or $43,000, because they are classified as indigent, though one of them has assets that include about $619,000 in investments, $186,000 in savings, $371,000 in paintings and jewelry, three automobiles and four properties.

Critics mock these facilities as the Hague Hilton. But an additional benefit — travel subsidies of tens of thousands of euros for family visits from distant African countries — is inflaming the already emotional debate among donor nations about whether the entitlements at the cluster of international courts meeting here have reached their limits.

Each court was intended, in part, to provide a model of humane, civilized detention that contrasts starkly with the horrific nature of the crimes the inmates are accused of. But how much is too much?

A group including France, Italy and smaller states is arguing that the nations financing the courts should not be covering benefits that they do not provide in their own prisons.

"We’re not treating them as equals to the rest of detainees in national prisons," said Francisco Jose Aguilar Urbina, Costa Rica’s ambassador to the Netherlands. "A guy who steals a chicken to feed his family will not be paid by the states for family visits."

The visits make up a small part of the budget of the International Criminal Court, which authorized the travel subsidies and spends about $126 million yearly for court costs, staff and investigators, along with the costs of housing and prosecuting four men. But the dispute has raised bigger concerns about costly legal processes that have dragged on and yielded no convictions, and has focused attention on other benefits at the detention facilities.

William Schabas, director of the Irish Center for Human Rightsin Galway, Ireland, said, "Behind this issue is a tug of war" — between the court’s judges, who generally support broad prisoner rights, and many of the countries that pay the bills.

"They are wondering what they are getting for their money," Schabas said. "This is a court that has existed for seven years and hasn’t finished one trial."

Diplomats from more than 100 nations gathered this month in Kampala, Uganda, to take stock of the International Criminal Court; the dispute over family travel is moving toward a resolution this autumn.

The court was created almost eight years ago as a permanent tribunal to prosecute genocide and war crimes. Its 12-cell detention center houses five prisoners: four from Congo and Charles G. Taylor, the deposed president of Liberia. Taylor, whose case is before a separate court, has two cells, one where he lives and one where he keeps documents.

They share the gym with 36 defendants, including the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who are before a court dealing exclusively with Balkan war crimes and are housed separately. That court does not provide travel benefits, but many of the prisoners’ home nations do, albeit far more modestly than the International Criminal Court.

Defending the International Criminal Court’s policy, Marc Dubuisson, its director of court services, said: "We have an obligation to show the world what is good management. Why would you want to sentence the children not to see their own parent?"

Thanks to conjugal visits, several detainees have become new fathers, including Taylor, 62, whose baby girl was born in February.

The first to tap family travel funds, in 2006, were the wife and five children of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, 49, an ex-rebel leader from Congo. He is accused of enslaving child soldiers who were forced to rape and kill. The court paid more than $16,000 in expenses covering air fare from Kinshasa, two hotel rooms for five nights, and a daily "dignity allowance" of $24 for adults and $12 for children. Court officials also provided winter clothes and a baby sitter for the children during conjugal visits.

Two years later, Lubanga’s old enemy, Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, 39, sought money for visits three times a year for his wife and six children. Ngudjolo is accused of organizing a massacre in which boy soldiers hacked and burned alive about 200 people.

When the court registrar sought to curb spending by rotating visits among relatives, Ngudjolo successfully appealed, demanding "respect for the entitlement of his children to visit their father." His travel budget this year is about $32,400.

Stephen Rapp, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crime issues, advocates alternatives like videoconference calls, which are under consideration. While the United States has not signed the treaty that created the International Criminal Court, it is the top donor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where Taylor is being tried.

"We have to make sure that they are humanely treated at an international standard," Rapp said. "But whether we should go to this whole level of flying families thousands of kilometers is much more doubtful."

The International Criminal Court’s supporters argue that the spending has been taken out of context. "It’s not a lot of money," said Cecilia Nilsson, who heads the legal section for the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, a network of 2,500 groups. "It’s part of keeping the detainees happy or, I don’t know the word — managing — the detainees."

"It was blown out of proportion," she added.

The debate is reaching another threshold — over whether to pay for visits not only for the accused but those already convicted of war crimes. The Special Court for Sierra Leone is considering that for convicts serving lengthy sentences in Rwanda.

"Yes, they have committed atrocities, but is the goal to reintegrate them back into society or is the goal to cut them off from society?" asked Binta Mansaray, the court’s administrative registrar.

How the detainees would react to any cost-cutting is unclear. Some of them are not fully happy with their treatment now.

Taylor has complained through his lawyer about "Eurocentric meals,"and he boycotted his trial for a day after having to sit handcuffed in a vehicle outside the court for several minutes, which he considered "disrespectful."

© 2010 The New York Times Company