U.N.: Milosevic Wasn't Poisoned

An autopsy and tests on Slobodan Milosevic's blood found no evidence of poison or medicines in concentrations that could have killed him, the U.N. war crimes tribunal said Friday.

Meanwhile, Milosevic's coffin was on display for a second day Friday as hundreds of his supporters continued to pay respects to their leader who died while on trial for genocide and war crimes.

The turnout was still lower than organizers' predictions of tens of thousands, and nowhere near the huge crowds Milosevic once commanded in his heyday.

Tribunal President Judge Fausto Pocar also said an outside investigation will be conducted on the running of the U.N. detention center where Milosevic was held during his four-year trial and where he died last Saturday.

"According to the pathologists, Slobodan Milosevic's cause of death was a myocardial infarction," Pocar said (audio). "Further, the pathologists identified two heart conditions that Slobodan Milosevic suffered from, which they said would explain the myocardial infarction. He added that a team of Russian pathologists reviewed the report and were in full agreement.

Questions were raised about the cause of the fatal cardiac problem after it was reported he had been taking medicines that were not prescribed by the U.N. cardiologist.

"No evidence of poisoning has been found," Pocar said, reading the preliminary results of a Dutch toxicology report.

A number of prescribed medications were found in his body, "but not in toxic concentrations," he said.

He also said no traces were found of the powerful antibiotic rifampicine, which a Dutch toxicologist had reported finding in a blood sample taken from the Serb leader earlier this year.

Rifampicine, which affects the liver's ability to break down enzymes, was thought to have blunted the effect of medication he was taking for his blood pressure, leading to speculation that it could have contributed to his death.

Since the drug disappears quickly from the body, the report said, it was unlikely that it "had been ingested or administered in the last few days before death."

Further tests were being conducted by the Netherlands Forensic Institute which conducted the autopsy last Sunday, Pocar said, and the conclusions were only provisional.

Confidential tribunal records from the trial were released to the pathologists to help in their investigation, he told reporters at the tribunal.

The results of the tests were delivered by the Dutch prosecutor's office to both the tribunal registrar, Hans Holthuis, and to Milosevic's lawyer, Zdenko Tomanovic, Pocar said.

Tomanovic and Milosevic's son Marko, who came The Hague to claim the body and send it to Belgrade for burial, had said Milosevic had been killed, and accused the tribunal of responsibility for his death.

Many of Milosevic's supporters in Serbia believe he was poisoned.

Holthuis, the tribunal's administrative head, ordered an external investigation to find out how Milosevic obtained drugs he was not supposed to have.

Tribunal officials earlier said he also had regular access to alcohol.

Members of Milosevic's Socialist Party — who were organizing the funeral and burial arrangements after authorities officially refused a state ceremony for the ex-president — kept a vigil overnight by the late Serb strongman's coffin, draped in a Serbian flag and covered with a wreath of red roses, the party's symbol.

On Thursday, Milosevic's body was brought from a morgue to a museum dedicated to the late communist dictator Josip Broz Tito in Belgrade's plush Dedinje district. Thousands of die-hard supporters converged through the day, to pass by the casket in front of which a large, framed color photograph of Milosevic was placed."

Milosevic's Socialist associates took turns standing next to it in groups of six as an honor guard.

The venue for the coffin's display was chosen after the Socialists were refused the right to display it at more prominent places, including the downtown parliament building. But the government tacitly allowed the viewing to be held at the Museum of Revolution, a decaying building holding gifts Tito received from foreign statesmen during his iron-fisted rule of ex-Yugoslavia from World War II until he died in 1980.

The museum is just a few hundred yards from the villa where Milosevic was arrested on April 1, 2001, two months before his handover to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.

Flown home on Wednesday, he is to be buried Saturday at a family estate in his hometown of Pozarevac, about 30 miles southeast of Belgrade. Workers there were digging the grave beneath Milosevic's favorite linden tree Thursday.

The Socialists reiterated on Friday expectations that Milosevic's widow, Mirjana Markovic, would arrive from Moscow for the burial.

However, Markovic, who lives in self-imposed exile in Russia, has indicated she would not come until all charges against her for alleged abuse of power during Milosevic's reign were dropped.

Pocar said that while the tribunal regrets that the Milosevic case will not come to judgment, there are other important cases still before it. "We continue to try the highest-level persons accused of perpetrating the most serious crimes against Serb, Croat, Bosnian Muslim, Albanian and other victims in the foreign Yugoslavia," he said.