Croatian Serb leader Babic commits suicide in jail Mon Mar 6, 2006pm ET
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Former rebel Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic has
committed suicide in jail in The Hague where he was being held to testify
against another top Croatian Serb, the U.N. war crimes tribunal said on
Monday.
The tribunal said in a statement that Babic was found dead in his cell at
the U.N. detention unit on Sunday evening.
"The Dutch authorities were called immediately. After conducting an
investigation, they confirmed that the cause of death was suicide," the
statement said, adding that Tribunal President Judge Fausto Pocar had
ordered an internal inquiry.
The tribunal did not say how Babic had killed himself.
Babic, 50, was the former president of the self-declared Krajina Serb
republic that broke away from Croatia after it declared independence from
Yugoslavia in 1991.
U.N. prosecutors regarded him as a key ally of former Yugoslavia President
Slobodan Milosevic in a campaign to expel non-Serbs from about a third of
Croatian territory and create a Serb-dominated state. Babic testified
against Milosevic in 2002.
"He is one of the most critical high-level insiders that the prosecution has
been able to produce," said Edgar Chen, from the Coalition for International
Justice, which monitors the tribunal.
"This will have an enormous impact on future cases where he would have
testified," he said. "He has already provided critical information about
Belgrade's involvement in Krajina."
Babic surrendered to the tribunal in 2003 and pleaded guilty in 2004 to
participating in a plan to forcibly and permanently remove the non-Serb
population from eastern Croatia.
The crimes he admitted to included murder, deportation and unlawful
imprisonment of non-Serb civilians, as well as destruction of their
property.
"SHAME AND REMORSE"
A dentist by training, Babic fled the Krajina Serb republic when the enclave
was recaptured in a Croatian offensive in 1995 called "Operation Storm".
Babic had said he felt a "deep sense of shame and remorse" over his actions.
In 2004, the tribunal sentenced Babic to 13 years in prison, but accepted
that his admission of guilt and cooperation with the prosecution should
count as mitigating factors, having been "at great risk to his family and
his own safety".
After the tribunal's appeals chamber confirmed Babic's sentence last year,
he was transferred to serve his sentence abroad but brought back to The
Hague last month to testify in the trial of Milan Martic, another Croatian
Serb.
Martic was also a high-level official of the Krajina Serb republic and is
charged with crimes against non-Serb civilians.
Babic testified against Milosevic in 2002. Known only as witness C-061, he
initially gave evidence behind a screen.
But judges lifted his protected witness status after Babic's lawyer said his
client wanted to reveal his identity to openly counter allegations made by
Milosevic and aid reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia.
"Mr Milosevic in 1991 you waged a horrific war. You dragged the Serbian
people into that war," Babic told Milosevic's trial in 2002. "You brought
shame upon the Serbian people. You brought misfortune on the Croatian
people, upon the Muslim people."
Milosevic, charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in
the Balkans in the 1990s, is accused of providing Krajina Serbs with money
and military support in a campaign seen as a prelude to the 1992-95 Bosnian
war.
Babic was the second ethnic Serb to be sentenced by the tribunal after
pleading guilty. Former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic, who admitted
responsibility for atrocities in the Bosnia war, was jailed for 11 years.
(Additional reporting by Nicola Leske)
Serbian News Network - SNN
[email protected]
http://www.antic.org/
