Former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic has committed suicide in his prison cell in The Hague, the UN war crimes tribunal said on Monday. Babic, 50, was serving a 13-year prison term for crimes against humanity, after admitting persecuting the non-Serb population in Croatia's Krajina region. UN prosecutors regarded him as one of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's key allies. He was found dead on Sunday evening, the tribunal said in a statement.
"The Dutch authorities were called immediately. After conducting an investigation, they confirmed that the cause of death was suicide," the statement said. It did not say how Babic had killed himself. A tribunal judge has opened an inquiry.
It is the second time a detainee in The Hague has committed suicide. The first was Slavko Dokmanovic, another Croatian Serb leader, in 1998. Babic was president of the self-declared breakaway Krajina Serb republic, covering about one-third of Croatian territory, after Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. He was jailed in 2004 for crimes committed during Croatia's 1991-1995 war. In return for his guilty plea, prosecutors dropped four other charges of murder, cruelty and the wanton destruction of villages. Babic was transferred to serve his sentence abroad, after judges rejected an appeal against his lengthy sentence.
He was brought back to The Hague last month to testify in the trial of Milan Martic, another Croatian Serb. He was earlier a key witness in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. A dentist by profession, Mr Babic had expressed shame and remorse over his actions in Krajina. | The people he had killed are still dead and now he is. Works for me. |
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