Dispatch from the Hague: war criminals drinking poison
by digby
A UN court has suspended an appeals hearing after a Bosnian Croat wartime commander claimed to have drunk poison.
A court spokesperson said Slobodan Praljak was still alive and is being treated.
Praljak is one of six former Bosnian Croat political and military leaders who were appealing their sentences in The Hague.
The 72-year-old tilted back his head and took a swing from a flask or glass as the judge read out that his 20-year prison sentence had been upheld.
"Judges, I am not a war criminal, I reject the verdict with contempt," he said after drinking. The presiding judge called for a doctor and halted the proceedings.
Praljak was originally sentenced in 2013 for his involvement in a campaign to drive Muslims out of a would-be Bosnian Croat mini-state in Bosnia in the early 1990s.