The chief UN prosecutor said yesterday that former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's death just before the close of trial deprived victims of justice -- and made the capture of war crimes fugitives Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic even more urgent.
"It is a great pity for justice that the [Milosevic] trial will not be completed and no verdict will be rendered," Carla Del Ponte said at a news conference a day after Milosevic was found dead in his cell near the Hague.
His death "deprives victims of the justice they need and deserve," she said.
She also said suicide could not be ruled out in Milosevic's death until the results of an autopsy were available. Earlier, the tribunal said there were no outward signs of suicide or unnatural death when his body was found Saturday.
Autopsy results were expected last night or this morning.
"You have the choice between normal, natural death and suicide," Del Ponte said.
She declined to comment on rumors that Milosevic may have been poisoned.
Del Ponte said Milosevic's death made "more urgent than ever" the arrest and extradition of Karadzic, the wartime Bosnian Serb leader, and his top officer, Mladic, for crimes committed during the Balkans wars in the 1990s.
Del Ponte, a former Swiss prosecutor, said the trials of eight other suspects indicted for the massacre of some 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in 1995 will help establish the record on Milosevic's involvement in what was Europe's worst slaughter since World War II.
Balkan crimes affected hundreds of thousands and will not go unpunished, she said.
Meanwhile, Milosevic's family and political allies in Belgrade raised suspicions about his death and said the UN court should be held responsible.
"The Hague tribunal has killed my husband," Milosevic's wife Mirjana Markovic was quoted as saying by CNN from Moscow.
Last month the judges denied a request from Milosevic, who was suffering from high blood pressure and heart problems, to undergo medical treatment in Moscow.
Milosevic's brother Borislav said the tribunal's judges thus bore "full responsibility" for his death.
The tribunal "is totally discredited, judicially and morally," he said on Russian television.
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`Butcher of the Balkans' died unrepentant
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