Death By Prosecution: The Autopsy

Since not holding an autopsy would confirm suspicions that the UN had former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic killed before he could finish making a mockery of the tribunal, one is being held.

Whether the official cause of death will be the same as the actual one, no one will ever know for sure.

Already the UN is trying to spin the results before they come out:

Dutch pathologists performed an autopsy on Slobodan Milosevic's remains Sunday amid claims by the former Yugoslav leader's supporters that he was poisoned and a statement by the chief UN war crimes prosecutor raising the possibility he committed suicide.

Mr. Milosevic, 64, had been ailing throughout the trial, suffering from high blood pressure and headaches. He asked the tribunal for permission to seek treatment in Russia, but that request was denied.

....

War crimes tribunal President Fausto Pocar said he ordered the autopsy and a toxicological examination after a Dutch coroner failed Saturday to establish the cause of death. Serbia sent a pathologist to observe the autopsy at the Netherlands Forensic Institute, which is controlled by the Dutch Justice Ministry.

Outside the tribunal on Sunday, Mr. Milosevic's legal adviser showed reporters a six-page letter he said the former leader wrote Friday claiming that traces of a "heavy drug" was found in his bloodstream, and he feared being poisoned.

The letter alleged that a drug used to treat leprosy or tuberculosis was found in his blood during a Jan. 12 medical exam, Zdenko Tomanovic said.

"They would like to poison me," the lawyer quoted Mr. Milosevic as telling him.

Mr. Tomanovic also complained that the court rejected the Mr. Milosevic family's request that an autopsy be conducted outside the Netherlands.

The pathologists have already received their instructions from the UN:

The tribunal earlier said there were no outward signs of suicide or unnatural causes of death.

But chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said suicide could not be ruled out until the autopsy results were released either late Sunday or early Monday. Both of Mr. Milosevic's parents committed suicide, as did a fellow war crimes defendant last week.

"You have the choice between a normal, natural death and suicide, and of course it could be possible," she said. "It is a possibility."

Hint, hint.

If the UN had Milosevic killed, all it would it have taken was a syringe filled with compressed air to induce a heart attack--simple, and untraceable. And with a previous history of heart trouble to make it seem plausible.

But in case they can't sell that story, declare his death a suicide. Even if he had nothing to do it with in his cell.

And so the UN will, if it did kill Milosevic, get away with murder.

Source: Globe and Mail