"Praljak is not a criminal. I reject your verdict. I just drank poison. I am not a war criminal. I oppose this conviction."

Said the former Bosnian Croat general, Slobodan Praljak, pausing, after "I reject your verdict," to drink from a small brown bottle. The scene was a UN tribunal in The Hague. Praljak had just heard that his 20-year sentence for war crimes had been upheld.

Praljak died, The Guardian reports. What were the facts of the crime?

Praljak was charged with ordering the destruction of Mostar’s 16th-century bridge in November 1993, which judges in the first trial had said “caused disproportionate damage to the Muslim civilian population.”... In their ruling, the judges allowed part of Praljak’s appeal, saying the bridge had been a legitimate military target during the conflict. They also overturned some of his convictions, but refused to reduce his overall sentence....

Here is a photograph showing the bridge as it looked in 1974:



The bridge was rebuilt in 2004 to look like this:



Both photos are from the Wikipedia article, "Stari Most."

"We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq."

Said President Obama, observing that what is happening now in Iraq is not simply a military problem and blaming the leaders of the Iraqi government for not doing enough to overcome sectarian differences.

ADDED: At Slate, Reihan Salam writes "We Never Should Have Left Iraq/A U.S. military presence could have mollified Sunnis and prevented the new civil war." Excerpt:

Under Saddam, Iraq’s Shia plurality was subjugated by its Sunni minority. The fear among Sunnis has long been that once the Shias come to power, they would be the victims of all manner of reprisals. A similar dynamic has long been at play in Syria, where the Assad regime, closely tied to the Alawite minority, rules over a Sunni majority. It also played a role in the Bosnian civil war, where various ethnic groups fought desperately to avoid minority status, which many believed would amount to a death sentence.

"Bosnia has been inhabited at least since Neolithic times."

"In the late Bronze Age, the Neolithic population was replaced by more warlike Indo-European tribes known as the Illyrians. Celtic migrations in the 4th and 3rd century BCE displaced many Illyrian tribes from their former lands, but some Celtic and Illyrian tribes mixed.... Conflict between the Illyrians and Romans started in 229 BCE, but Rome wouldn't complete its annexation of the region until 9 CE. In the Roman period, Latin-speaking settlers from all over the Roman empire settled among the Illyrians and Roman soldiers were encouraged to retire in the region."

In what is now called Bosnia and Herzegovina, today's "History of" county.