Milan Babić

Milan Babić
Милан Бабић
Babić in 1993
1st and 3rd President of Republic of Serbian Krajina
In office
19 December 1991  16 February 1992
Prime MinisterDušan Vještica
Preceded byposition established
Succeeded byGoran Hadžić
In office
12 December 1993  23 January 1994
Preceded byGoran Hadžić
Succeeded byMilan Martić
5th Prime Minister of Republic of Serbian Krajina
In office
27 July 1995  7 August 1995
PresidentMilan Martić
Preceded byBorislav Mikelić
Succeeded byposition abolished
Personal details
Born(1956-02-25)25 February 1956
Kukar, PR Croatia, FPR Yugoslavia
Died5 March 2006(2006-03-05) (aged 50)
The Hague, Netherlands
Cause of deathSuicide by hanging
NationalitySerb
Political partySerb Democratic

Milan Babić (Serbian Cyrillic: Милан Бабић; 25 February 1956 – 5 March 2006) was a Croatian Serb politician and war criminal who served as the first president of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, a self-proclaimed state largely populated by Serbs of Croatia that wished to break away from Croatia during the Croatian War of Independence.

After the war, he was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2004 and was the first ever indictee to plead guilty and enter a plea bargain with the prosecution, after which he was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Babić expressed "shame and remorse" in a public statement and asked his "Croatian brothers to forgive their Serb brothers" for their actions.

After he was sentenced in 2004, Babić was found dead in his prison cell in The Hague in March 2006, in an apparent suicide.