Court couldn’t have ‘detected’ Balkan war criminal’s poison

THE HAGUE: The potassium cyanide that Bosnian Croat war criminal Slobodan Praljak used to commit suicide in court could not have been detected before he drank it, said the UN tribunal’s internal probe released late on Sunday.

Praljak killed himself in front of UN judges in The Hague late last month, just seconds after they upheld his 20-year jail sentence for war crimes committed during Bosnia’s 1990s conflict. The 72-year-old was rushed to hospital, where he died the same day. "There are no measures that would have guaranteed detection of the poison at any stage", Justice Hassan Jallow said in a statement.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) launched the inquiry earlier this month to shed light on how Praljak managed to bypass tight security to smuggle toxic liquid into the courtroom and commit suicide on November 29.

Preliminary results released following an autopsy showed that the Bosnian Croat commander died from heart failure after swallowing potassium cyanide during a court hearing broadcast live around the world.