Babic Suicide Report Exonerates Jail Staff

The Hague tribunal has released the results of its internal inquiry into the death of the former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic, who committed suicide in the court’s custody earlier this year.



Babic, who was found dead in his cell at the United Nations detention Unit on March 7, had confessed war crimes and testified on behalf of Hague prosecutors in a series of trials, including those of the late Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and the senior Bosnian Serb politician Momcilo Krajisnik.



At the time of his death, he was just days away from completing his testimony in the case against fellow wartime Croatian Serb leader Milan Martic.



Babic had pleaded guilty at the beginning of 2004 to persecuting Croats on political, racial and religious grounds while president of Croatia’s Serb-held Krajina region. Testifying against members of the Serbian political regime was a condition of a plea-agreement, which saw him sentenced to 13 years.



The investigation into his death, headed by the vice president of the tribunal, Judge Kevin Parker, concludes that Babic committed suicide by putting a plastic bag over his head and hanging himself with a leather belt.



At or about the same time as the hanging took place, Babic also suffered a heart attack, says the report.



It publishes in full the translation of a short note written by Babic, which the judge says was found in his cell after his death “inside the cover of his personal bible”.



Apparently addressed to his wife, it says, “Find peace for yourself and don’t mourn me. I need peace.” It is signed “Your Milan”.



The judge says that allegations reported in the media – which were reportedly originally made by Vojislav Seselj, another detainee in The Hague – that Babic’s note accused the tribunal of having exerted pressure on him to testify falsely against other Serbian accused were “entirely false”.



The report confirms that Babic was segregated from all other prisoners at the detention unit “for his own safety and at his own request”. However, it details all the difficulties that he reportedly faced during the previous periods he had spent at the unit.



It notes that while in The Hague between November 2003 to June 2004, after which he was sentenced to 13 years in prison, Babic had been able to live in a house as a protected witness, rather than in the prison.



When transferred into the unit, after being sentenced, he was segregated from a number of other prisoners. But according to his children, he felt threatened by those who “considered him a traitor”.



There was some suggestion from his counsel, Peter Micheal Muller, that in either late 2004 or early 2005 Babic began to feel suicidal.



Babic was then transferred in September 2005 to a third country to serve his sentence. He was “under a strict regime” for the first two months, his family told Judge Parker, with no contact with his wife, and thereafter only a few telephone calls and letters.



Judge Parker says that Babic’s separation from his wife and two children “particularly worried” Babic. They had lived together until he was sentenced and even while in detention unit waiting for a third country to take him, he had been able to have daily telephone contact with them.



When his family were finally relocated at the end of February this year, as part of the witness protection programme of the tribunal, Babic was still concerned that they only had temporary visas for their new resident country and that might affect his children’s education.



He was also apparently “extremely worried”, says the report, about whether he would be able to get residence rights himself in the same country after serving his sentence.



Judge Parker details the problems faced by tribunal officials dealing with relocation of witnesses, including the limited number of countries available, and the restrictions they place on accepting convicted war criminals. He points out that the arrangements depend on decisions of governments.



He recommends that staff need to “guard against unrealistic expectations being built up by detainees, other witnesses, members of their families” about relocation policies.



Despite these “obvious matters of concern”, the report says, Babic’s suicide “came as a complete shock to those most familiar with him”. His wife and children could not, initially, believe that he had taken his own life.



The report exonerates the staff at the detention unit saying that it could not have been foreseen that Babic was at risk of suicide. There was no evidence to conclude any “neglect on the part of the staff of UNDU in assessing whether there was a risk of suicide or self-harm”.



Janet Anderson is IWPR’s programme manager in The Hague.