Former Serb rebel leader commits 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, committed suicide in prison, the UN war crimes tribunal said yesterday.

Babic, who was serving 13 years for crimes against humanity, was found dead Sunday evening in his cell at the UN detention centre in Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague, said a tribunal statement.

The Serb minority revolted after Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991, setting off a war that lasted until 1995.

With the support of Slobodan Milosevic the Yugoslav president Croatian Serbs proclaimed their own republic with Babic as its president and began an ethnic cleansing campaign against non-Serbs.

Babic later was a pivotal witness at Milosevic's war crimes trial, which is continuing in The Hague.

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 Republic of Serbian Krajina.

His appeal against the lengthy sentence was rejected last July.

He returned to The Hague last month to testify against Milan Martic, who became the leader in Krajina after Babic broke with Milosevic.

Babic was accused, along with Milosevic, of being part of a conspiracy to clear roughly one-third of Croatia of non-Serbs and incorporate that area into an ethnically pure Serbian state.

Unlike Milosevic who rejects the legitimacy of the UN court and was extradited to The Hague - Babic voluntarily surrendered to face the charges.

In his plea agreement, Babic said he knew nothing of the murders of non-Serbs until many years later.