Thousands of people packed a concert hall in Zagreb Monday for a memorial service for Bosnian Croat general Slobodan Praljak, who killed himself in a UN courtroom in November after his war crimes sentence was confirmed.
Praljak drank a beverage laced with cyanide on Nov. 29, while sitting in the courtroom, after the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) upheld his 20-year sentence for war crimes against Muslim Bosniaks in the 1992 to 1995 Bosnian war.
He was cremated in a private ceremony on Thursday, with no media present.
The cremation was not reported until the weekend.
However, the memorial service in Zagreb drew large crowds.
The Lisinski concert hall was packed and video screens were mounted outside for those who could not enter.
The high attendance for the event reflects the outrage in Croatia at the guilty verdicts for Praljak and five other Bosnian Croat leaders.
The men are regarded by many as heroes in spite of their alleged role in a terror campaign driving Bosniaks out of western Bosnia, which was described in detail during the trial.
Angering Croats in Bosnia and Croatia even more, the verdict linked then-Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and his officials to the ethnic cleansing campaign.
Addressing the memorial on Monday, the late Tudjman’s son, Miroslav, described the verdict as a “theatre of the absurd” and Praljak as “a giant … not a war criminal.”
Earlier, parliamentary parties in Zagreb dismissed the verdict as “unjust and unacceptable.” No government officials spoke at the memorial.(dpa/NAN)