UN: The UN war crimes tribunal said yesterday that initial results of blood tests showed no sign that former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's death by heart attack was caused by poisoning. However, it said key questions over earlier tests remained.
Mr Milosevic, who died in jail last Saturday just months before a verdict in his war crimes trial, had suffered from high blood pressure and a heart condition which, according to an initial autopsy, explained his heart attack.
But speculation grew over whether he had deliberately tried to exacerbate his condition or whether he had been poisoned, as the 64-year-old suggested in a letter addressed to Moscow the day before he died.
"So far, no indications of poisoning have been found," said Judge Fausto Pocar, president of the UN war crimes tribunal. There was evidence of his prescribed medication, but not in toxic concentrations. He stressed that these were provisional results.
Tribunal registrar Hans Holthuis confirmed that traces of rifampicin - a leprosy and tuberculosis drug that would have neutralised Mr Milosevic's medicines for his existing health conditions - were found in a January 12th blood test.
Mr Holthuis said he could not explain how the rifampicin was found in Mr Milosevic's blood or how unprescribed drugs, which the tribunal knew he was taking, may have been smuggled in.
"That is, indeed, the burning question. I have no ready answer to that."
The tribunal has ordered an external inquiry into the running of the detention centre, where Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic committed suicide a week before Mr Milosevic's death.
No traces of rifampcin were found in Mr Milosevic's blood at the time of his death, Mr Pocar said. The Dutch Forensic Institute told investigators that the drug disappears from the body quickly and that it was unlikely it was taken in Mr Milosevic's last days.
The court had denied a December request by the Serbian leader to travel to Russia for heart treatment, ruling that he could receive the best possible treatment in the Netherlands.
One medical expert who tested the January blood samples said he believed Mr Milosevic knowingly took rifampicin to improve his case for going to Russia, where his wife, son and brother live.
His family has blamed the court for his death, but Borislav Milosevic, brother of the late Serbian leader, said in reaction to the latest tests: "If they say there isn't any [evidence of poisoning] then there isn't."
Yesterday the tribunal confirmed it knew Milosevic had access to unprescribed medicines and that "contraband" had been found during a search, but it defended its security regime.
"I think we acted in a proper way," said Mr Holthuis.
As the tribunal had granted Mr Milosevic the right to defend himself, he was given a "privileged setting" - an office with a telephone and computer - to meet witnesses he called.
"Witnesses were not subject to the same rigorous search methods as other visitors," said Mr Holthuis.
Retired Russian Col Gen Leonid Ivashov, one such witness, has said he passed medicines to Milosevic. "He did not trust the prison doctors. The entire extent of his medical treatment was him taking medicines that were brought to him by his visitors," he told Narodnoye radio on March 11th.
"We, among others, took medicines with us when we went to visit him."