Milosevic ‘left letter saying he feared being poisoned’

SLOBODAN Milosevic wrote a six-page letter the day before he was found dead, claiming that traces of a “heavy drug” had been found in his blood and that he feared being poisoned, a legal aide to the former Yugoslav president said yesterday.

Zdenko Tomanovic showed the letter to reporters at the UN tribunal, and complained that the court trying Milosevic rejected the family’s request that a postmortem be conducted outside the Netherlands.

Milosevic was “seriously concerned” about being poisoned, Mr Tomanovic said.

The letter, dated March 10, was addressed to the Russian Embassy. A one-line English language cover note asked the embassy to forward the letter to the Russian foreign minister.

Milosevic was found dead Saturday morning in his cell at The Hague in the Netherlands.