Milosevic’s blood ‘bore traces of drug’

Tests on Slobodan Milosevic’s blood taken before he was found dead on Saturday showed traces of a medicine that negated the effect of high blood pressure drugs, a Dutch toxicologist said this morning.

The claim emerged as Dutch prosecutors released the body of the former Serb leader for burial after an eight-hour autopsy revealed he had died of heart failure. A toxicologist’s report on the body is due to be published today.

Donald Uges, a toxicologist from Groningen University, told Reuters that tests he conducted two weeks ago on Milosevic’s blood showed traces of rifampicin, a drug used in treating leprosy and turberculosis that would have made other medicines ineffective.
He suggested Milosevic had taken the drug in the hope the UN war crimes tribunal would agree to his requests to go to Moscow for treatment if his condition did not improve.

“I don’t think he took his medicines for suicide - only for his trip to Moscow. When he was in Moscow he would be free. That is where his friends and family are. I think that was his last possibility to escape the Hague,” Dr Uges told Reuters.

Milosevic, who had a heart condition and high blood pressure, was found dead in his cell on Saturday, months before a verdict was due in his trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Dr Uges told the Associated Press he had been asked to examine the sample after Milosevic’s blood pressure failed to respond to medication.

The former Serbian leader was required to take his drugs under surveillance when UN-appointed doctors concluded he was not taking them. Yet still his blood pressure failed to fall.

The toxicologist said he had found traces of rifampicin, which can break down other medicines in the liver, when he examined Milosevic’s blood. “[It] makes the liver extremely active. If you’re taking something it breaks down very quickly,” he told the Associated Press.

The Russian government today confirmed it received a letter on Sunday from Milosevic, dated Friday, which alleged he was being deliberately given the wrong drugs for his illness.

“Persons that are giving me the drug for the treatment of leprosy surely cannot be treating me,” he wrote to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. “Especially those persons against whom I have defended my country in the war and who also have an interest in silencing me can likewise not be treating me.”

The letter was handed to the Russian embassy in the Netherlands by Milosevic’s aides on Saturday, the foreign ministry said.

“In this handwritten letter, Slobodan Milosevic speaks about an inadequate treatment conducted by doctors of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and is again asking for Russian support in getting permission for undergoing therapy at a medical facility in Moscow,” the ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said.

Mr Kamynin said Russian pathologists were ready to fly to The Hague to take part in additional forensic research requested by Milosevic’s family, including his older brother Borislav.

Borislav Milosevic, who lives in the Russian capital, was himself taken during the night to Moscow’s Bakulev clinic with a heart problem, the Interfax news agency reported. “I had some problem overnight, but it wasn’t a heart attack,” the agency quoted him as saying.

Milosevic’s lawyer today called for the 64-year-old’s funeral to be held in Belgrade and said Milosevic’s son Marko would come to The Hague today or tomorrow to pick up the body.

Agencies