Warning: This article contains suicide references which may cause some readers to feel distressed.
A war criminal has some chilling final words before he drank poison in court and died by suicide.
It’s not often that you can say that you actually heard someone’s last words, especially in such a setting.
But those who were in the room with Slobodan Praljak will never be able to forget.
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It was on 29 November 2017 in a United Nations (UN) courtroom for an appeal hearing for Praljak's 20-year jail sentence that he ended his own life.
The ex-commander of Bosnian Croat forces had been sent down for war crimes after being convicted of crimes against humanity in 2013.
However, the appeals judge was not going to be lenient on him.
Once the judge confirmed the 72-year-old’s long and hard sentence, he took his own life, right in front of those in attendance, and the cameras.
You can see how he looked moments before he uttered his last words, as he fiddled with a bottle in his hands.
Praljak went on to claim that he was innocence and then drank from the small bottle containing potassium cyanide before collapsing.
According to the BBC, the former commander of Bosnian Croat military forces shouted for all to hear: "Slobodan Praljak is not a war criminal. I am rejecting the court ruling."
He then tipped his head back and quickly drank the liquid.
All of this was streamed live from the court's website, and anyone could have witnessed him collapsing.
Praljak died two hours later in a Dutch hospital, but one questioned remained: How did he manage to get the bottle inside of court?
Nobody actually knows.
In 2018, Dutch prosecutors ended their investigation into Praljak’s suicide after an investigation had been launched into how the war criminal was able get it into the UN courtroom.
The Hague Public Prosecution Service concluded in a statement that they could not find out ‘in what way and at what point in time Mr Praljak had obtained the potassium cyanide he used’.
Surveillance footage from court also led to nothing after police and prosecutors reviewed it and interviewed witnesses.
The also searched his UN cell and found that there were no criminal offences committed in his bid to die by suicide.
According to reports, Praljak left a handwritten ‘farewell letter’ to his family, which was left in his cell at the UN Detention Unit, where he resided for years while he waited for the outcome of his 1992-95 Bosnian war crimes.
It is said to have been written two years before he killed himself.
It told his wife and step-children that he didn’t want a funeral, but did want his ashes to be scattered over a cemetery in the Croatian capital of Zagreb.
Prosecutors shared that he wrote ‘that he had already decided to put an end to his life a long time ago, should he be found guilty’.
If you have been affected by any of these issues and want to reach out to someone, call Samaritans for free on their anonymous 24-hour phone line on 116 123.
Topics: World News
Britt Jones