Croatian war criminal Slobodan Praljak drank 'deadly chemical'
An investigation is under way into how Slobodan Praljak smuggled the container into a tightly guarded court in The Hague.
Thursday 30 November 2017 12:07, UK
The container from which a Croatian war criminal drank shortly before he died contained a deadly chemical, a Dutch prosecutor has said.
Former Croatian army chief Slobodan Praljak died in hospital on Wednesday after drinking from a small bottle and yelling "I am not a war criminal, I oppose this conviction" when his 20-year sentence was upheld by UN judges at The Hague.
The events were broadcast on a video feed, with judges forced to temporarily suspend the hearing and paramedics seen entering the courtroom after he claimed the substance was poison.
On Thursday, prosecutor Marilyn Fikenscher said: "There was a preliminary test of the substance in the container and all I can say for now is that there was a chemical substance in that container that can cause death."
She did not reveal the nature of the substance, but a post-mortem examination will be carried out on Praljak's body.
Praljak, 72, was convicted in 2013 of crimes including murder, persecution and deportation for his role in the attempt to create a Bosnian Croat mini-state in Bosnia in the early 1990s during the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that Praljak wanted to send a message to the UN court that the verdict was unjust.
He said the former general was "obviously shaken by the possibility he would be convicted" of war crimes.
An investigation into how he managed to take the small bottle into the tightly guarded International Criminal Tribunal courtroom is under way.
Toma Fila, a lawyer, said it would have been easy to bring poison into the court.
He said security for lawyers and other court staff was "just like at an airport", but that "pills and small quantities of liquids" would not be registered.
:: The deadly legacy of the Balkan wars
Croatia's President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic denounced the court ruling, and said Praljak "would rather take his own life than live as a convict for the acts he firmly believed he hadn't committed".
The Bosnian war in the 1990s mainly saw Bosnian Muslims fighting Bosnian Serbs, but there were also deadly clashes involving Muslims and Croats.
A total of 100,000 people died and 2.2 million were displaced during the three-year conflict.