The Serb war crimes suspect, Slavko Dokmanovic, hanged himself at a detention centre overnight while awaiting a verdict in his trial for the massacre of 200 hospital patients in Croatia, the Yugoslavia tribunal said yesterday.
Dokmanovic (48), a former mayor of the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar, was one of the top suspects among the 28 held by the United Nations court in Scheveningen jail outside The Hague. The judges were due to hand down their verdict on July 7th.
The case dies with Dokmanovic, the tribunal said. "The case is terminated. You cannot pass judgment on a dead person," the tribunal spokesman, Mr Christian Chartier, said.
He added: "We are a legal body. We have to abide by legal standards. And one of the legal standards is that you don't pass judgment on a dead person. The accused is in this case dead, so no judgment, no verdict, no whatsoever."
Dokmanovic was found hanging from the hinge of his cell door shortly after midnight.
The tribunal released no further details of his death, which is the object of an inquiry.
Dokmanovic's body, currently in the mortuary of a nearby hospital, is expected to be transferred to his family after possibly undergoing an autopsy.
Arrested almost exactly a year ago in a covert operation in Croatia's East Slavonia region, Dokmanovic had denied complicity in the ethnic cleansing slaughter of mostly Croat patients from Vukovar hospital.
The mass killing was one of the most notorious incidents in the conflict which followed Croatia's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia. Prosecutors described it as a crime that evoked memories of the second World War. Dokmanovic had regularly complained of ill-health and depression during his six-month trial, which began in January and wound up last week. Last Friday, his medication doseage was raised at the request of his lawyer, Mr Chartier said.
On Sunday evening, Dokmanovic complained he felt unwell and was examined by a doctor. He placed Dokmanovic under close supervision, with a warder checking on his cell every 30 minutes.
Dokmanovic was last seen alive at around 11.30 p.m. Shortly afterwards he is believed to have plunged his cell into darkness by short-circuiting the power with an electric razor.
Dokmanovic had been under close supervision once before, following an incident in 1997, Mr Chartier said, without giving details. But he added that Dokmanovic had suffered from depression during his six-month trial. "In the past he had been visited by a psychiatrist from Belgrade who was due to visit him in the coming days."
He said the surveillance, which included camera monitoring, had been lifted after two or three months at the request of Dokmanovic's lawyer and his psychiatrist.
Mr Chartier said the tribunal had not been aware Dokmanovic might attempt to kill himself.
"It was not a suicide watch," he said. "This is a detention unit where the accused are kept awaiting their trials. These are not convicted criminals but persons presumed innocent. So that, by any standard, the regime is looser."
The prosecution contended Dokmanovic and three Yugoslav People's Army officers orchestrated the abduction and murder of the Vukovar hospital patients.
They were killed at a farm in the village of Ovcara outside Vukovar in November 1991, two days after the Danube River market town succumbed to a three-month siege by Yugoslav People's Army and Serb paramilitaries, investigators say.
Of some 260 patients removed from the hospital by Serb forces, the bodies of 200 were dug up by war crimes investigators in Ovcara in 1996. The rest are missing.
The tribunal jail, in the seaside town of Scheveningen outside The Hague, is currently being extended to host a growing number of prisoners awaiting trial at the UN court.
The tribunal has 24 cells permanently at its disposal within Scheveningen jail - each measuring 10.8 square metres (yards) and with its own bathroom.
Prison authorities have allowed the court to occupy extra cells in recent months, bringing the total number of suspected war criminals to 28, before Dokmanovic's death.
Television and newspapers are made available to the prisoners, who are not allowed to mix freely but are generally assigned a companion for exercise breaks.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was established by Resolution 827 of the United Nations Security Council in May 1993. It is the first international body for the prosecution of war crimes since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials held in the aftermath of the second World War.