A defence witness in the genocide and war crimes case of former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic has died of natural causes, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal said on Monday.
Forensic pathologist Dusan Dunjic's body was discovered in a Hague hotel room last week, shortly before he was scheduled to testify as an expert witness before the UN court.
Dutch authorities conducted an autopsy on Dunjic, around 65, in the presence of a Serbian pathologist, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said.
"As a result of the autopsy it was concluded that Mr. Dunjic died of natural causes," it said in a statement.
Dunjic frequently testified as a defence expert in cases before the ICTY and was scheduled to testify last week in the case against Mladic, who faces 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in Bosnia's brutal three-year civil war in the early 1990s.
More than 100,000 people died and 2.2 million others were left homeless in the 1992-95 conflict that was sparked after the collapse of the former Yugoslavia a year earlier.
Mladic and his political alter ego Radovan Karadzic, are facing similar charges before the UN tribunal, in particular over their roles in the Srebrenica massacre, the worst bloodshed on European soil since World War II.
Almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in mass graves when Bosnian Serb troops under Mladic's command overran the UN-protected enclave in eastern Bosnia in mid-1995.
Prosecutors say the pair, along with late Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, tried to "cleanse" Bosnian Muslims and Croats from Bosnia's Serb-claimed territories.
The defence case in Mladic's trial is ongoing with judgement expected in November 2017.