Speculation that Slobo consciously cheated fate by taking his own life. From The Australian March 12, emphasis added:

FORMER Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic may have committed suicide as a last act of defiance to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the court's chief prosecutor said in an interview published today.

"He could have done it as a last act of defiance towards us. Perhaps he did commit suicide," chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said in an interview in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

She said Milosevic would have not been the first war crimes suspect from the Balkans to take his own life before the UN court could judge him.

Milosevic, who was found dead in his cell at the UN detention centre in The Hague yesterday, suffered high blood pressure and heart problems.

Ms Del Ponte said it was strange the doctors at the tribunal, who regularly checked the former Yugoslavia leader's health, had not reported a sudden deterioration in his condition.

"It's odd, although naturally it is possible, that he died unexpectedly without the doctors noticing that his health had suddenly worsened," she said.

She said it was possible Milosevic might have killed himself because he had used up all but 40 of the 360 hours he had been allotted to defend himself against the charges of genocide, other war crimes and crimes against humanity he faced over the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

"After that I would have made my speech. The trial would have been over before the summer. Our calculations were that he would have been given a life sentence. Perhaps he wanted to avoid all that," Ms Del Ponte said.

She denied any responsibility in Milosevic's death, which some Serbian papers described as murder, saying that on the contrary she was "furious" about it.

"I can't believe that all these years of work, energy, meticulous investigations and perpetual obstacles to overcome can just have vanished into thin air. It just disappeared in a flash. There was no more Milosevic trial.

"As the prosecutor, I realised I would not be able to complete the most important trial of my life," she said.

"As the representative of thousands of victims who for years have been demanding justice, I found myself empty-handed.

"For me, Milosevic's death represents a total failure."