Slobodan Praljak

"We had lunch together on May 8, 1993. In the evening, he went on duty, to replace a schoolmate of his, and he stayed there until May 9. That guy, Nedim, returned home and my Fedja stayed [at the Fourth Corps' command HQ]," his mother Jadranka Huskovic recalled of her last meeting with her son.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday turned down a request for early release from Jadranko Prlic, wartime prime minister of the unrecognised Croat-led Herzeg-Bosnia statelet.

The detainees were tied together with wire and made to stand in a line, and then their captors started to execute them with shots in the back.

He recalled how the unknown soldier then told his father: "Turn around and look at your house one last time."

Alija Konjhodzic never saw his father again.

After the arrest, he went to the military police station to try to find out why his father had been taken.

Former prisoners will lay flowers at a ceremony on Sunday to commemorate the suffering of Bosniak civilians held by Bosnian Croat forces at the Kostana Hospital in Stolac in 1993, an event organised by the Association of Camp Prisoners of Stolac.

A spokesperson for Angela Merkel said on Wednesday that the German Chancellor was not familiar with the nationalist song that was performed at the Croatian Democratic Union rally that she attended on Saturday, and was not informed about the content of the event's musical programme in advance.

Several events are being held in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina on Thursday and Friday to commemorate the death of former Bosnian Croat general Slobodan Praljak, a year after he swallowed poison in the courtroom while the verdict finding him guilty of war crimes was being read out.

A Dutch investigation into former Bosnian Croat military official Slobodan Praljak’s suicide at the UN war crimes tribunal in 2017 failed to establish how he obtained the poison that he took in the courtroom.

A Croatian artist is exhibiting a painting of Bosnian Croat general Slobodan Praljak taking poison after the Hague Tribunal convicted him last year of committing war crimes against Bosniaks in the 1990s.

The president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association quit after refusing to revoke a decision to award a reporter accused of biased coverage of Bosnian Croat military chief Slobodan Praljak’s war crimes conviction.