War criminal drinks poison in court, dies hours later
PUBLIC SUICIDE OF FORMER BOSNIAN CROAT GENERAL STUNS WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL
‘Slobodan Praljak is not a war criminal,” the accused said in a solemn voice, as he stood in the dock. “With disdain, I reject this verdict.”
Then, ignoring calls to sit down, Slobodan Praljak, a former Bosnian Croat writer and film and theatre director turned wartime general, drank from a small bottle.
“What I drank was poison,” he told judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague.
Praljak, also a professor of philosophy and sociology, was rushed to hospital but pronounced dead two hours later.
On Wednesday, the courtroom was itself a crime scene after the apparent suicide by Praljak, a commander of Croat forces during the 1990s war in Bosnia.
Praljak, 72, was jailed for 20 years in 2013 for his role in war crimes including a massacre of civilians in central Bosnia and the deliberate destruction of the 16th-century Mostar bridge during the siege of the city by Croatian forces in 1993. The judges said the bridge destruction “caused disproportionate damage to the Muslim civilian population”.
Praljak, who was commander of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) main staff in the war, was appealing convictions on multiple charges including aiding and abetting or failing to prevent the killing of civilians, attacks on international personnel, and the needless destruction of buildings.
The most notorious charge related to his role in the massacre of Bosnian Muslim civilians in the village of Stupni Do, a village near the central Bosnian municipality of Vares, in October 1993.
At least 37 people were killed after Praljak issued an order to “sort out the situation in Vares showing no mercy towards anyone. Find people who are up to both the times and the tasks.”
Those who received the order included Ivica Rajic, a Croat commander in central Bosnia whose troops carried out the massacre and committed rapes in Stupni Do on October 23 and October 24. Rajic was found guilty of crimes including wilful killing and abuse including sexual assault in 2006.
On Wednesday, Praljak was in court to hear the result of a joint appeal he and five other senior figures in the HVO, the Bosnian-Croat force in the 1992-1995 war, had lodged against convictions for war crimes.
The court upheld convictions against all six men, including a 25-year sentence imposed on Jadranko Prlic, the former prime minister of the breakaway Bosnian Croat state known as Herzog-Bosna.
Praljak committed suicide when Carmel Agius, the presiding judge, read out the verdict rejecting his appeal.
Judge Agius immediately suspended proceedings and called a doctor while Praljak’s lawyer shouted “my client says he has taken poison!”
“We suspend the ... We suspend ... Please, the curtains. Don’t take away the glass that he used when he drank something,” said the judge.
An ambulance was called and Praljak was reported to be receiving medical treatment before his death was confirmed in the early afternoon.
It is unclear how he managed to smuggle poison into the courtroom.
But a lawyer who has frequently defended suspects at the war crimes court told The Associated Press it would be easy to bring poison into the court.
Prominent Serbian lawyer Toma Fila said security for lawyers and other court staff “is just like at an airport.” Security officers inspect metal objects and confiscate cellphones, but “pills and small quantities of liquids” would not be registered, Fila said.
Dutch Police have opened a criminal investigation.
In the past, two Serbs have taken their lives while in the tribunal’s custody.
In July 1998, Slavko Dokmanovic, a Croatian Serb charged in the deaths of over 200 Croat prisoners of war, was found dead in his prison cell in The Hague. Milan Babic, a wartime Serbian leader who was closely co-operating with prosecutors, took his life in a prison tribunal cell in March 2006.
Wednesday’s hearing was the final case at the groundbreaking tribunal before it closes its doors next month. The tribunal, which last week convicted former Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic of genocide and other crimes, was set up in 1993, while fighting still raged in the former Yugoslavia. It indicted 161 suspects and convicted 90 of them.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said he regretted the death of Praljak.