War criminal suicide case: Autopsy starts on Bosnian Croat war criminal

THE HAGUE: Dutch prosecutors on Friday began the autopsy of a Bosnian Croat war criminal, who took his life apparently by drinking poison from a small bottle in front of UN judges.

It is hoped the examination and toxicology tests on the body of Slobodan Praljak -- being carried out at one of the world's leading forensics labs in The Hague -- will reveal what it was that he drank.

"The autopsy began this morning," a spokesman for the Dutch prosecution service Vincent Veenman told AFP.

"Two Croatian experts are there as observers at the request of the ICTY," he said, adding: "We don't know when we will have the results".

The results may help shed light on how the 72-year-old former military commander managed to smuggle the bottle into the tightly-secured International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and commit suicide in shocking scenes seen around the world. 

The tribunal announced Friday it has also "initiated an independent expert review focusing on the ICTY internal operations" following the incident.

Praljak died in hospital shortly after drinking from a small brown glass bottle in the courtroom, with his lawyer claiming it was poison. Prosecutors told AFP that initial tests had shown the liquid was "a chemical substance that can cause death."

His final act of defiance came just moments after judges rejected his appeal, upholding his 20-year jail term for atrocities committed in a breakaway Bosnian Croat statelet during the 1990s wars.

The shocking images drew the curtain on two decades of work at the court, set up in 1993 to try those responsible for the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.

- Lingering questions -

But it remains a mystery what the former theatre and movie director, known for his forcible courtroom presence and outbursts, drank and how he managed to get it past the tight security at the tribunal.

"Was the poison already in the prison, or in the courtroom? They need answers to all these questions, because obviously it raises suspicion about possible 'complicity' in quote marks by prison staff," said international lawyer Celine Bardet, an expert in war crimes issues.

For Dutch international lawyer Goran Sluiter from the University of Amsterdam there are three scenarios: either Praljak obtained the toxic substance in the UN detention centre where he has been held since 2004; or on the way to the court building; or inside the courtroom itself.

It is possible that "the liquid he drank was a medicine that he had received in the centre for treatment, but which he then stashed away," Sluiter told AFP.

Former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic died in his cell during his trial at the ICTY in 2006. Doctors concluded that he had died of natural causes, and found no other substances in his body.

But in the past Milosevic was known to have "self-medicated as evidenced by the finding on occasions of non-prescribed medications in his privileged office and his cell," the official ICTY report into his death concluded.

If Praljak "got hold of the bottle inside the courtroom then that reduces the circle of people who could have helped him. So you are thinking about the lawyers," Sluiter said.

- Prison contraband -

Diana Goff, law expert and researcher with the Clingendael Institute think-tank, highlighted that "contraband is very easy to get in and out of prisons generally, so it's not just an ITCY issue."

"There's many people that it could be. They can have visits from religious officials, they can have doctors, they can have friends, they can have conjugal visits, their family can come," she told AFP.

Praljak's lawyer Nika Pinter has already said she had had no idea what her client was planning. 

"Nobody killed him, it was suicide. I am sad but I understand and respect what he did," she told Croatia's HINA news agency Thursday. 

"I never thought he could do such a thing, but I understand because he is a man of honour who couldn't live with a conviction for war crimes and being led out of the courtroom in handcuffs."