Big mystery remains unsolved after war criminal died from drinking poison in court

Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide which some readers may find distressing.

A big mystery still remains unsolved after a war criminal died from drinking poison while in court.

On 29 November 2017 Slobodan Praljak was in a United Nations (UN) courtroom for a hearing to appeal his 20-year jail sentence.

The Croatian ex-general manager had been sentenced for war crimes after first being convicted of crimes against humanity in 2013.

But seconds after the appeals judge confirmed the 72-year-old’s two-decade long sentence, he took his own life.

Praljak proclaimed his innocence and then drank from a small bottle containing potassium cyanide before collapsing in court.

Viewers watched as the former commander of Bosnian Croat military forces drank the liquid with a trembling hand, streamed live on the court’s website.

Praljak died after drinking poison in court (ICTY/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

The war criminal died in a Dutch hospital around two hours later.

And in late 2018, Dutch prosecutors ended their investigation into a mystery surrounding Praljak’s suicide in court.

An investigation had been launched into just how the war criminal was able to smuggle the poison into the UN courtroom.

But in a written statement, The Hague Public Prosecution Service that a months-long investigation had failed to establish ‘in what way and at what point in time Mr Praljak had obtained the potassium cyanide he used’.

Surveillance footage from court was studied by police and prosecutors while they also interviewed witnesses and searched the criminal’s UN cell.

But the prosecutors concluded that there were no criminal offences committed in his suicide. The probe also added that potassium cyanide can be stored as a dry powder, with only a tiny amount required for fatal consequences.

He had a 20 years sentence (ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN/AFP via Getty Images)

“In this context, it isn’t strange that the importation or storage of the substance wasn’t noticed,” prosecutors said.

Praljak had left a handwritten ‘farewell letter’ to his family, believed to have been written two years before he killed himself in court.

It was found in his cell at the UN Detention Unit where he had spent years awaiting the result of his appeal for crimes during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

In the note, he told his wife and step-kids he didn’t want a grave or funeral, requesting for his ashes to be scattered over a cemetery in the Croatian capital of Zagreb instead.

Prosecutors added that he wrote ‘that he had already decided to put an end to his life a long time ago, should he be found guilty’.

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