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War Criminal Drinks Poison at The Hague, Live Streamed to the World

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday December 03 2017, @10:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the does-this-smell-like-almonds? dept.

takyon writes:

After hearing his guilty sentence upheld, convicted war criminal Slobodan Praljak took out a small bottle of poison and drank it. The act of defiance was streamed live to viewers around the world. Praljak died a few hours later:

It happened in the span of a few confused minutes.

Moments after hearing that his 20-year sentence for war crimes had been upheld, Slobodan Praljak defied the admonitions of his judges, declared his innocence a final time — and with eyes wide, as if shocked himself at what he was doing, put a tiny glass to his lips and gulped deeply. "I just drank poison," he exclaimed after lowering the glass. And the presiding judge asked for the curtains to be closed.

The end came quickly. Praljak died within hours Wednesday. But as Dutch authorities open their investigation into the incident at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, one difficult question promises to persist much longer: How exactly did the former Bosnian Croat general manage to commit suicide in a high-security courtroom in The Hague, Netherlands, and in front of viewers streaming the video live around the world?

There is reason — besides his swift death — to believe Praljak's declaration that he had indeed taken poison.

"There was a preliminary test of the substance in the container and all I can say for now is that there was a chemical substance in that container that can cause death," Dutch prosecutor Marilyn Fikenscher told The Associated Press. That said, the official cause of death will have to wait until an autopsy is completed.

Slobodan Praljak. The poison is thought to have been cyanide.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:22PM (3 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:22PM (#604653) Homepage Journal

    "The sort of malignant psychopathic person who is capable of leading blindly loyal followers to commit atrocities against another group will in total sincerity declare that they are actually the vicitims of that same group and their acts are not revenge but for their own safety"

    You're absolutely right. And their view is totally sincere, and maybe not even totally wrong. Two sides, each hating the other, each avenging itself for atrocities that the other side commits, each outdoing the other until both have gone beyond the bounds of civilized behavior. Add in the essential need, in time of war, to dehumanize the enemy, and you have the perfect setting for war crimes.

      Every culture is capable of this. Look at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and CIA rendition for recent American examples.

    I have never been convinced that war crimes trials make a lot of sense. The people are prosecuted for violating laws imposed on them from outside their countries, and always after the fact. It looks a lot like legalized revenge, since it's always the losers who are put on trial. By all rights GW Bush, his staff, and their British counterparts should be put on trial for torture, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other crimes. Obama and his staff for the humanitarian disaster they created in Libya, plus the continuation of torture and of Guantanamo. But, no, Bush and Obama both "won", so they're safe.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:56PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:56PM (#604667)

    Tony Blair also won. And yet....

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/11/tony-blair-prosecution-war-crimes-hague-geneva-pillage-economy-iraq-chilcot [theguardian.com]

    While the period formally defined as occupation ended in June 2004, British troops remained in Iraq for a further five years. The official narrative was that they were there at the invitation of sovereign Iraqi governments, but those nominal governments were successively appointed, promoted or defined by the US and UK.

    Contrary to Blair’s protestations, government documents released this week spell out how Iraqi oil was a central motive behind the war. Throughout the six years that British troops remained in Iraq, the UK consistently maintained two objectives in relation to oil: to transfer oil from public ownership to multinational companies, and to ensure BP and Shell got a large share of it. While the post-2004 phase may escape the formal legal definitions, it raises important political and ethical questions.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @10:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @10:16PM (#604813)

    I have never been convinced that war crimes trials make a lot of sense.

    But have you ever been convicted by a war crimes tribunal? That is the more interesting question. And why do you live in country that refuses jurisdiction of the ICC? Curious, that. What does the opinion of someone probably either convicted or going to be convicted by a war crimes tribunal have to do with anything?