Dutch officials don’t know how Balkan war criminal got poison for courtroom suicide
- Slobodan Praljak swallowed potassium cyanide live on TV during an appeal hearing of the former Yugoslavia war crimes court in The Hague in November 2017
Dutch prosecutors admitted on Friday they had not managed to establish how a Bosnian Croat war criminal got the poison he used in his courtroom suicide in front of UN judges.
The conclusion came almost a year after 72-year-old Bosnian Croat commander Slobodan Praljak swallowed potassium cyanide at an appeal hearing of the former Yugoslavia war crimes court in The Hague.
The hearing was being broadcast live around the world at the time.
“The investigation has not shown in what way and at what point in time Mr Praljak had obtained the potassium cyanide he used,” the Dutch public prosecution service said. “No criminal offences were established.”
Praljak, in a last show of defiance against the now-closed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), took the poison from a small brown bottle on November 29 last year.
Moments before, UN judges had upheld his 20-year jail term for war crimes committed during Bosnia’s bloody 1992-1995 war.