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.