Inquiry ordered after Babic suicide
Milan Babic, the Serb leader of a rebel republic in Croatia and one of the key figures in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, has committed suicide in a Netherlands prison, the UN war crimes tribunal said today.
Babic, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison for crimes against humanity, was found dead yesterday evening in his cell at the UN detention centre in Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague, said a tribunal statement.
Babic was a ranking Croatian Serb leader when the Serb minority revolted after Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991.
He later was a pivotal witness at former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s war crimes trial, which is continuing in The Hague.
Babic’s family was informed after the chief medical officer of the centre confirmed the cause of death was suicide. A tribunal judge immediately ordered an inquiry.
The tribunal did not say how Babic killed himself.
It was the second time a detainee committed suicide. The first was Slavko Dokmanovic, another Croatian Serb leader, in 1998.
Babic, 50, pleaded guilty in 2004 to a single charge of inflaming an ethnic cleansing campaign that killed hundreds of Croats and expelled tens of thousands in the self-proclaimed Croatian Republic of Krajina.
The plea was part of a deal in which prosecutors dropped four other charges of murder, cruelty and the wanton destruction of villages during the war in Croatia.
His appeal against the lengthy sentence was rejected last July and he was transferred to another prison to serve his sentence.
He returned to The Hague last month to testify against Milan Martic, who took over leadership of the Krajina republic after Babic broke with Milosevic, his former mentor.
