War criminal swigs lethal poison in court
Horror in the Hague as Balkans thug sentenced to 20 years escapes justice ... by taking his own life
A BALKANS war criminal killed himself yesterday by drinking poison in a United Nations courtroom.
After losing an appeal against a 20-year sentence, Slobodan Praljak produced a vial and shouted: ‘Praljak is not a war criminal – I reject your judgment with contempt. I have taken poison. I am not a war criminal. I oppose this conviction.’
Fellow defendants looked on in astonishment as the 72-year-old Bosnian Croat former general drank the liquid and slumped in his chair.
Judge Carmel Agius ordered the court to be curtained off from the public gallery and suspended the televised hearing. Declaring the Hague courtroom a crime scene, the judge told officials: ‘Don’t take away the glass that he used when he drank something.’
Medical staff arrived minutes later and tried to treat the former warlord. He died in a Dutch hospital nearby.
Praljak was serving his prison sentence in a UN prison cell at an undisclosed location and was driven each day to the court in a secure van for his appeal hearing.
A Serbian lawyer who frequently defends suspects at the court said it would have been easy to pass Praljak a small bottle of poison.
Toma Fila said: ‘It is just like at an airport. They inspect metal objects, like belts, metal money, shoes, and take away mobile phones.’ But pills and small quantities of liquids are not examined, he added.
The astonishing scenes unfolded as judges were passing judgment on appeals by six former Bosnian Croat political and military leaders against convictions from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Praljak was jailed for 20 years in 2013 for crimes against humanity during the Bosnian war.
Tribunal spokesman Nenad Golcevski said he died despite attempts by paramedics and doctors to save him. ‘Mr Praljak drank a liquid while in court and quickly fell ill,’ he said. ‘Medical staff immediately assisted Mr Praljak.
‘Simultaneously an ambulance was summoned. Mr Praljak was transported to a nearby hospital to receive further medical assistance, where he passed.’
Croatia’s prime minister confirmed the suicide at a press conference yesterday. Andrej Plenkovic said: ‘We have all unfortunately witnessed his act by which he took his own life.’ In a sign of the con- tinued divisions within the region, he said Praljak’s death reflected the ‘deep moral injustice’ done to six Bosnian Croats whose sentences were upheld by the international war crimes court yesterday.
The appeal hearing continued in a different courtroom several hours after the incident. Praljak and his co- defendants were charged with war crimes in 2004 and convicted after a seven-year trial of orchestrating a campaign of terror and atrocities to drive out Bosnian Muslims and seize their territory. They received sencharged tences of ten to 25 years for leading the drive to try to carve an ethnically pure Croatian ministate out of Bosnia between 1993 and 1994.
Bosnian Croats and Muslims were initially allies against the Serbs but fought each other for 11 months. Praljak commanded Bosnian Croat forces known as the HVO from July to November 1993.
He faced a raft of charges, the most notorious of which related to his role in the massacre of Bosnian Muslim civilians in Stupni Do, a village near the central Bosnian city of Vares, in October 1993.
At least 37 people were killed after Praljak issued an executive command to ‘sort out the situation in Vares showing no mercy towards anyone’. He was also with ordering the destruction of the famous Ottoman bridge in Mostar, which judges said ‘caused disproportionate damage to the Muslim civilian population’.
In yesterday’s ruling, the judges said the bridge had been a legitimate military target during the conflict. They also had overturned some of Praljak’s other convictions, but refused to reduce his overall sentence.
The judgements were delivered a week after former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, dubbed the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, was jailed for life for genocide.
His hearing also descended into chaos when he accused the judges of lying. The former warlord was forcibly removed and the verdicts were delivered in his absence.
‘I reject your judgment’