During the Bosnian War of 1992-1995, commander Tolimir (b.1948) was intelligence chief for the main headquarters of the Army of the Serb Republic (VRS), where he supervised security affairs and reported directly to VRS commander General Ratko Mladic.

Tolimir appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2007, accused of involvement in the alleged murder of 8,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica in July of 1995.

After years of trial, in April 2015, the Hague Tribunal’s appeals chamber handed Tolimir a life sentence for committing war crimes against the citizens of Srebrenica.

However, ICTY acquitted him of genocide in Zepa, another UN-protected “safe area” taken by Serbs in the last year of the Bosnian War.

Zdravko Tolimir used to be “the right-hand man of the Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic and sometimes knew more than Mladic himself,” the presiding judge, Theodor Meron, said during the original trial, stressing that a life sentence was appropriate in Tolimir’s case due to the gravity of his crimes.

“The accused had knowledge and was aware of the genocidal intent of the Bosnian Serb leadership and was responsible for genocide,” the judge said.

However, this opinion was not shared by the entire panel. Judge Prisca Matimba Nyambe of Zambia said the evidence against Tolimir was “entirely circumstantial, based on presumptions, suppositions”.

“There is no evidence linking him to the crimes perpetrated by his subordinates, nor does the evidence demonstrate that he knew that those crimes were being perpetrated,” Nyambe wrote , adding that she was “wholly unpersuaded” of Tolimir’s guilt in any of the charges alleged in the indictment.

Tolimir himself always insisted he was conducting a military operation against Bosnian Muslim “terrorist groups” that were attacking the Serb civilian population.

The ICTY was established in 1993 to put those on trial who were accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity following the break-up of multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. Armed conflicts on the territory of Yugoslavia’s successor countries lasted throughout most of the 1990s and resulted in death of more than 130,000 people, according to a number of independent assessments.

Several ICTY defendants died during the course of their trials in The Hague, among them former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who passed away in the court’s custody on March 11, 2006, before the completion of his four-year trial.

The Krajina Serb leader Milan Babic allegedly committed suicide in The Hague on March 5, 2006, only six days before Milosevic’s death,

In August of 2015, after being transferred to Lisbon prison unit, General Mile Mrksic, a former officer in the Yugoslav National Army, became the first to die outside of Scheveningen.

In October of 2015, Dusan Dunjic, a defense witness in former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic’s case, was found dead at his hotel in The Hague just hours before he was to testify in court.

Other Serb nationals who died in ICTY detention centers are General Djordje Djukic (died 1996), Croatian Serb leader Slavko Dokmanovic (died 1998); Milan Kovacevic, former mayor of Prijedor (died 1998), General Momir Talic (died 2003); and Miroslav Deronjic, a Bosnian Serb official (died in Sweden in 2007).

Ratko Mladic, commander of the RS Army and Tolimir’s former boss, still remains on trial.

=== 2 ===

La Serbia invia al Tribunale dell’Aia una nota di protesta

Posted on 12/02/2016 by Biagio Carrano

Il primo ministro serbo Aleksandar Vucic ha inoltrato al Tribunale Penale Internazionale dell’Aia una nota di protesta in relazione al comportamento da essa tenuta nei confronti dei rappresentanti serbi.
Vucic nella note richiede che il TPI rispetti la Serbia e non applichi doppi pesi nei confronti del paese, in particolare la Serbia non accetta che alcuni interrogatori vengano tenuti nei tribunali dei paesi di origine degli imputati, come concesso ad alcuni paesi. Vucic ricorda inoltre nella nota tutte le garanzie che ha dato la Serbia in merito al rilascio temporaneo di alcuni imputati al fine di curarsi, impegni che il Tribunale ha ignorato. Vucic ha concluso che i negoziati tra serbia e TPI riprenderanno quando questo organo dimostrerà di rispettare la Serbia.
A esplicita domanda dei cronisti Vucic ha risposto che “la vita del generale Zdravko Tolimir è molto più importante di tuttele richieste del TPI”. Anche il minsitro della giustizia Nikola Selakovic ha comunicato che invierà una nota di protesta: “La Serbia da decenni collabora con il TPI e vi sono tante prove di ciò ma merita di essere trattata come uno stato sovrano”.
Il Tribunale Penale Internazionale non ha risposto a una nota della Repubblica di Serbia dell’ottobre 2015 in cui si chiedeva il rilascio temporaneo del generale Zdravko Tolimir per consentirgli di sottoporsi a cure mediche mentre qualche giorno fa alla richiesta del TPI di procedere all’arresto di tre membri del partito radicale serbo il presidente del Tribunale Alphonse Orie non ha consentito al rappresentante della Serbia di intervenire in dibattimento.

(RTS, 12.02.2016)

=== 3: FLASHBACK ===

Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell at The Hague at 9am on the morning of March 11, 2006. The ICTY had recently refused a request for Milosevic to go to Russia to have specialist medical treatment for his heart condition.

An autopsy took place, but it was carried out without the presence of the independent medical team sent by the Milosevic family. Neither were Russian doctors allowed access to Milosevic’s body and tissue samples.

The ICTY’s official report into Milosevic’s death stated: “These investigations have confirmed that Mr. Milosevic died of natural causes from a heart attack and that there was no poison or other chemical substance found in his body that contributed to the death.”

However, a tribunal registrar did confirm that traces of rifampicin, a tasteless, odorless drug which can easily be administered in food without the subject knowing anything about it, was found in Milosevic’s blood in a test on 12th January. Although no rifampicin was found in Milosevic’s blood at the autopsy that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there earlier that week. As the district public prosecutor explained: "Rifampicin disappears from the body quickly, and the fact that no traces were found implies only that it is not likely that rifampicin had been ingested or administered in the last few days before death.”

Could Milosevic have been murdered through the administration of rifampicin? The answer is an emphatic Yes.

In an article on Milosevic’s death in the London Times, British doctor and former MP, Thomas Stuttaford OBE, described the use of rifampicin as “a cunning way to kill a man which needs no expertise,” and explained how the drug could have been used to negate the effects of the medication Milosevic was taking for his heart condition.

“In this case, rifampicin was apparently used to block the pathway for heart medication… You don't have to be terribly skilled to establish which drugs interfere with others. They are listed in a reference book called Martindale's and any would-be poisoner could have looked up the pharmacology of the drugs that Milosevic was being prescribed and discovered those that used the same pathways.” Stuttaford wrote.

Less than 72 hours before he died, Milosevic had written a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, in which he expressed his fears that he was being poisoned.

The full text of Milosevic’s letter can be read here.

The death of the former President of Yugoslavia was not the only one at the Scheveningen detention center that week. Only six days earlier, on March 5th, another Serb, Milan Babic, was found dead in his cell.

"The Dutch authorities were called immediately. After conducting an investigation, they confirmed that the cause of death was suicide," the tribunal said in a statement. But a tribunal spokesperson also admitted that there was no indication that Babic had been contemplating suicide.

At the request of Babic’s family, an autopsy was conducted at the Netherlands Forensic Institute, which revealed that the prisoner “had also suffered a heart attack at about the same time as the hanging.”

“The final autopsy conclusion discloses that the precise cause of the death of Mr. Babic has not been determined,” stated the ICTY report into Babic’s death. The report also noted: “A question was also raised concerning the consistency of a ligature mark on the neck with the belt provided to the pathologists by the investigative police.”

As yet another Serb dies suddenly at The Hague; it’s surely time for a full, independent inquiry into all of the suspicious deaths which have taken place in and around the ICTY.

For if the ‘conspiracy theories’ are right, and people are being put to death there to serve certain political agendas, we have a right to know.