Associated Press
Slobodan Praljak brings a bottle to his lips, seconds after judges reconfirmed his 20-year prison sentence during a Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, November 29, 2017.
- Bosnian War general Slobodan Praljak died of a heart attack after drinking cyanide at his conviction and sentencing for war crimes.
- Authorities still haven't figured out how Praljak obtained the poison.
Dutch prosecutors have revealed that Slobodan Praljak died of a heart attack after drinking cyanide as his conviction and sentence for war crimes was affirmed by the the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands, on Wednesday.
"Praljak had a concentration of potassium cyanide in his blood. This has resulted in a failure of the heart, which is indicated as the suspected cause of death," prosecutors said in a statement,
The revelations answer the question as to what the contents of the bottle he used to drink the liquid were full of, but authorities still haven't figured out how Praljak obtained the poison, or how he managed to smuggle it into the courtroom.
Praljak was convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes in 2013 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, nearly half of which had already been served after he surrendered to the tribunal in 2004. His 2017 trial was an appeal that eventually reaffirmed his sentence, though some parts of his conviction were overturned.
He oversaw the Siege of Mostar, one of the bloodiest battles of the Yugoslav wars in one of Bosnia's most diverse cities. Thousands of Croats, Serbs, and Muslims were killed, and the city's 16th-century Old Bridge was destroyed.