Milosevic autopsy finds no toxic concentrations of drugs in his body
Tribunal president Judge Fausto Pocar also said an outside investigation will be conducted on the running of the UN detention centre where Milosevic was held during his four-year trial and where he died March 11.
Milosevic was ruled to have died of a heart attack, but questions were raised by his son and his supporters about the cause of death after it was reported he had been taking medicines that were not prescribed by the UN cardiologist.
“No evidence of poisoning has been found,” Pocar said, reading a report’s preliminary results. A number of prescribed medications were found in his body, “but not in toxic concentrations,” he said.
He also said that 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 affect of the beta-blockers Milosevic 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.”
The toxicologist who submitted a report on February 12 on Milosevic, Donald Uges, said he believed the detainee took the antibiotic to show that he was not receiving adequate treatment and to press his demand to the tribunal for temporarily release to go to a Moscow heart clinic. The judges repeatedly denied his request.
Milosevic “received the best possible treatment,” Pocar said.
Further tests were being conducted by the Netherlands Forensic Institute which conducted the autopsy on March 12, Pocar said, and the conclusions were only provisional.
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