Ruthless warlord commits suicide after smuggling poison into court
Bosnian commander convicted of war crimes protests innocence before drinking from flask
A COURTROOM in The Hague itself became a crime scene yesterday when a convicted war criminal committed suicide with poison he had smuggled into the dock.
Slobodan Praljak, a commander of Croat forces during the Nineties war in Bosnia, drank poison from a flask moments after a panel of appeal judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia upheld his 20year sentence for war crimes.
He was pronounced dead two hours later. Dutch police declared the courtroom a crime scene and have opened an investigation.
Praljak, 72, was jailed in 2013 for war crimes including a massacre of civilians in central Bosnia and the deliberate destruction of Mostar bridge during the siege of the city in 1993.
He committed suicide after Carmel Agius, the presiding judge, upheld his sentence, despite accepting some elements of his appeal.
Refusing to sit, he said: “Judges, Slobodan Praljak is not a war criminal. With disdain, I reject this verdict.” Ignoring a request to sit down, he swigged from what appeared to be a small flask and announced: “What I drank was poison.”
Judge Agius immediately suspended proceedings and called for a doctor while Praljak’s lawyer shouted “my client says he has taken poison!”
An ambulance was called but his death was confirmed in the early afternoon. It is unclear how he managed to smuggle poison into the courtroom. Toma Fila, a Serbian lawyer, said that it was “absolutely possible” to bring poison into the courtroom in The Hague, claiming that security was “just like an airport”. He said: “They inspect metal objects, like belts, metal money, shoes, and take away mobile phones,” adding that “pills and small quantities of liquids” would not be checked.
Praljak was in court to hear the result of a joint appeal he and five other senior figures in the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), the Bosnian-croat official military force in the 1992-1995 war, had lodged. The court upheld convictions against all six men, including a 25year sentence imposed on Jadranko Prlić, the former prime minister of the breakaway Bosnian Croat state known as Herzeg-bosnia.
Praljak, who was commander of the 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 including the historic Old Bridge and mosques during the siege of Mostar.
The most notorious charge related to his role in the massacre of Bosnian Muslim civilians in Stupni Do, near the Bosnian town of Vareš, in October 1993. At least 37 people were killed after he issued an order to “sort out the situation in Vareš showing no mercy towards anyone”.
Those who received the order included Ivica Rajić, a Croat commander whose troops carried out the massacre and committed rapes in Stupni Do. Rajić was found guilty in 2006.
The appeal verdict was the last judgment by the International Criminal Tribunal, which was established in 1993. The court is to close next month.