Milosevic Reportedly Died From Heart Attack

Excerpt: U.N. Official: Milosevic Had Heart Attack
Associated Press - March 12, 2006

By ANTHONY DEUTSCH, Associated Press Writer

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - A heart attack killed Slobodan Milosevic in his jail cell, according to preliminary findings from Dutch pathologists who conducted a nearly eight-hour autopsy on the former Yugoslav leader Sunday, an official at the U.N. war crimes tribunal said.

The official, who agreed to discuss the autopsy only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, commented after a day of speculation on the cause of death that swirled from ill health to suicide to poison.

A tribunal spokeswoman said the court had no immediate comment on the official's report. [Passage Omitted]

An official in Serbia-Montenegro said Milosevic's body was to be delivered to his family by Monday. But there was disagreement among relatives about whether he should be buried in his homeland of Serbia or in Russia, where his wife and son live in exile. [Passage Omitted]

The president of the U.N. tribunal, Fausto Pocar, said he ordered the autopsy after a Dutch coroner failed Saturday to establish the cause of death. A pathologist sent by Serbia observed the procedure at the Netherlands Forensic Institute, an agency of the Dutch Justice Ministry.

Outside the tribunal's offices, Milosevic's legal adviser showed reporters a six-page letter that he said the former leader wrote the day before his death claiming traces of a powerful drug used to treat leprosy or tuberculosis had been found in his bloodstream.

Zdenko Tomanovic said Milosevic was seriously concerned. "They would like to poison me," he quoted Milosevic as telling him.

A Dutch state broadcaster, NOS, said later that an adviser to the tribunal confirmed such a drug was found in a blood sample taken in recent months from Milosevic. The report said the adviser, who was not identified, said the drug could have had a "neutralizing effect" on Milosevic's other medications.

Doctors found traces of the drug when they were searching for an answer to why Milosevic's medication for high blood pressure was not working, the NOS report said.

Milosevic had appealed to the war crimes tribunal last December to be allowed to go to a heart clinic in Moscow for treatment. The request was denied. He repeated the request as late as last month.

The tribunal spokeswoman, Alexandra Milenov, said she could not comment on the NOS report. "We don't have any information. We simply have to wait for the results" of the autopsy, she said.

In Belgrade, Rasim Ljajic, human rights minister for Serbia-Montenegro, said Milosevic's remains would be handed over to the former leader's family by Monday.

The final resting place had not been settled. [Passage Omitted]