On November 29, 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) issued its final judgment in Prosecutor v. Jadranko Prlić et al., affirming nearly all the convictions against the defendants Jadranko Prlić, Bruno Stojić, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Petković, Valentin Ćorić, and Berislav Pušić. As the press release notes, the case relates to events within Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1994 for which the defendants were “convicted of crimes against humanity, violations of the laws or customs of war, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, specifically murder, wilful killing, persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, deportation, unlawful transfer of civilians, imprisonment, unlawful confinement of civilians, unlawful labour, inhumane acts, inhuman treatment, extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion or education, unlawful attack on civilians, and unlawful infliction of terror on civilians.” The Court also affirmed the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that they were involved in a joint criminal enterprise “aimed at creating a Croatian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina that would facilitate the reunification of the Croatian people, through ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population.”

Immediately after the public reading of the appeal judgment, one of the defendants, Slobodan Praljak, whose twenty-year sentence had just been affirmed, drank a liquid that he said was poison. Praljak soon fell ill and was rushed to a hospital, where he died. The ICTY has stated that it is initiating an expert review regarding his passing “focusing on the ICTY internal operations, in accordance with standard procedures.”