Babic was convicted for participating in a joint criminal operation of forced and permanent removal of the Croatian and other non-Serb population from the area of RS Krajina from 1 August 1991 to June 1992. Former president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Srpska Krajina Milan Babic was found dead in his cell in Scheveningen on Sunday 5 March. Dutch police confirmed that he had hung himself, however, ICTY President Fausto Pocar has initiated an internal investigation.
Babic's death is a serious blow to the Hague Tribunal, as this is the second suicide to take place there. In 1998, former Vukovar mayor Slavko Dokmanovic hung himself with a tie he had received a few days earlier. Two suicides are too many for an allegedly top security institution with a small number of prisoners.
According to unofficial reports, since turning himself in on 26 November 2003, Babic complained numerous times that he did not feel safe, as he was allegedly unlike among the prisoners. However, the possibility of murder should be excluded.
Babic's name was on the prisoner's list at Scheveningen although according to his German attorney Peter Muller, he had spent only four days there prior to his appearance before the court. No one in the ICTY reacted to that statement, but during the sentencing of 13 years in prison, the court stated that the “211 days spent in detention” would be calculated in his sentence. “We don't have that in my country, that a convicted person's sentence includes the time not spent in prison to the day of sentencing,” commented Muller.
The ICTY sentenced Babic in 2004 to 13 years in prison for war crimes in Croatia, and this sentence was confirmed in July 2005. He arrived in the Hague on 26 November 2003, 10 days after he was indicted. Babic admitted being guilty of persecution on political, racial and religious grounds and in return, the prosecution dropped four charges of the indictment and proposed a maximum sentence of 11 years. The Trial Chamber was not bound by this recommendation and ruled he serve 13 years.
Babic was convicted for participating in a joint criminal operation of forced and permanent removal of the Croatian and other non-Serb population from the area of RS Krajina from 1 August 1991 to June 1992. The remaining participants indicted for this joint criminal operation are Slobodan Milosevic, Goran Hadzic, Milan Martic, Vojislav Seselj, Jovica Stanisic, Franko Simatovic and Generals Blagoje Adzic and Ratko Mladic.
“I stand before this Tribunal with a deep feeling of shame and remorse, for I allowed myself to participate in the persecution of innocent people. I beg of my Croat brothers that they forgive their Serb brothers. I beg the Serbs to leave the past behind them,” said Babic when he admitted his guilt. Babic also said that “I can only hope that by telling the truth, admitting my guilt and remorse that I can serve as an example to those who still believe that such inhumane acts can be justified”.
Attorney Muller commented on Babic, “His wife had said that he yelled in his sleep, had nightmares and many sleepless nights. It all began in autumn 1991. I am not talking about a man who was afraid of punishment and had serious headaches, but about a man who was subject to a deep and long moral dilemma about all that he had done and was blaming himself”.
The Hague considered Babic to be the prosecution's crown witness, as he had accepted to cooperate and testified against Milosevic and wartime president of the assembly of Bosnian Serbs Momcilo Krajisnik. He was also supposed to have testified in the cases against former head of the SDB intelligence agency, Stanisic, the founder of the notorious “Red Berets” Simatovic and the leader of the Serbian Radical Party Seselj. It was planned that Babic appear as a witness in the cases against Bosnian Serb Radovan Karadzic and former commander of their army Mladic when there to men were to be brought before the ICTY.
Babic was disappointed with his 13 year sentence, holding this to be unfair in comparison to the 11 years sentence for Biljana Plavsic, who was accused for more serious crimes. Babic was brought back to the Hague last month to testify against Martic.
When he began to testify in the Martic trial, which was supposed to continue on Monday, the prosecutor warned Babic not to reveal the country where he is serving his sentence. This is yet another enigma ties to Babic, for according to the ICTY documents of 3 March, Babic's name was on the list of prisoners serving their sentence in Sweden. Sweden is one of 10 countries who signed an agreement with the ICTY to accept prisoners, with the explicit emphasis that a prisoner can only be sent to Sweden if he or she has “strong ties to that country”. That means either that he or she is a Swedish citizen or family members are Swedish or Danish citizens. Contrary to the usual ICTY procedures, the ICTY did not release information on where Babic was serving his sentence, though in the above mentioned document, it stated that Babic, like Biljana Plavsic who has close relatives in Sweden, was serving his sentence there. The prison conditions in Sweden are among the best in Europe, meaning that the ICTY likely did Babic a favour in exchange for his testimony.
On testifying against Martic, Babic stated that Milosevic had a secret plan to great a “Great Serbia” and that the head of the SDB in Serbia carried out actions and controlling the events in RS Krajina. He specifically named Stanisic, Simatovic and Dragan Vasiljkovic, better known as Captain Dragan. Babic's comment on Dragan Vasiljkovic was that he “worked for the SDB and was commander of the 'Knindze' unit and was under the command of Simatovic. In August 1991, Stanisic told me that they were paying Captain Dragan”.
He said that the SDB activities began in April 1991, such that “at first there was a discriminatory policy against the Croats in Krajina. Only their houses were raided and only they were searched for weapons. They incited problems in border regions with Croatia in order to get the YNA involved and to separate the fighting sides”. Babic said that he had received orders from Milosevic to appoint the head of the General Staff for the Territorial Defence and that Serbia was financing the RS Krajina. According to Babic, it was Milosevic who was at the head of the RS Krajina line of command, with Stanisic second and Martic third. Babic also stated that in 1991, the Serbian forces attacked Croatian villages in the Knin area and forced the population to flee, and that Martic is responsible for the abuse of Croatian prisoners in the Knin prison. “At that time, I didn't know about the crimes,” said Babic, though he at the time was premier of RS Krajina, while Martic was Interior Minister. Babic was supposed to have continued his testimony against Martic on Monday.
Babic gave an interview for Nacional in February 2000 on his status in Serbia. “I am a displaced person. I have a white displaced persons card. I have no Yugoslav citizenship, and I never regulated my Croatian papers”. He claimed that after leaving Knin, he lived with a cousin in Zemun for four years before renting a place. When asked what he lived from, he said that his wife worked as a doctor at the health clinic and that they had a farm with 700 chickens at his uncle's place in Zemun polje “to get by”. “It's not a farm, but it's nicer to say farm than chicken coop”, said Babic, refusing to allow our photographer to take a few photos, as though he was ashamed of how he was making his living. When asked why he didn't open a private dental practice in Belgrade, he responded, “That requires a large investment”. Allegedly, he had begun to build a family home next to the chicken farm. There was also talk in Belgrade that he owned a bakery in Zemun Polje, but he claims that his cousin is the owner.
Babic lived an almost anonymous life in Serbia. He spoke out, only once in early 2000 when, as president of the SDS Krajina, he send out a hand-written press release in which he stated that Croatia “has to legally ensure the political and territorial autonomy of Krajina and allow the exiled Serbs the unconditional right to return to their villages and cities”. He commented for Nacional that many parties had offered him to join them, which would ensure him a living, but that he refused them. However, talk in Belgrade was that he offered his services to many parties, but they all ignored him.
At the end of 2002, when protected witness C-061 appeared before the Tribunal in the Milosevic case, the Belgrade media immediately reported that this was Babic. However, knowing the identity of the protected witness was not reserved only for a small circle of reporters. After the first day of testimony, numerous Serbs from the Krajina region, of which there are several thousand in Belgrade, began to say that witness C-061 was in fact Babic. They recognized him not only because of what he was saying, but also his “style of speaking” which they knew well. They claimed that everything he said before the ICTY was true, but that he was not only a witness to those events, but the main actor, to the same extent as all those people he mentioned before the ICTY.
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