War crimes tribunal upholds Croat Serb leader sentence on appeal News
War crimes tribunal upholds Croat Serb leader sentence on appeal

[JURIST] The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [official website] on Monday upheld a 13-year jail sentence [ICTY press release] for Milan Babic [Wikipedia profile], the wartime leader of Croatia's rebel Serbs who took part in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the early 1990s. Babic, who for a short time led the Krajina Serb republic after Croatia gained independence, had pleaded guilty to one count of persecution [ICTY text] in a deal where prosecutors dropped four other charges of murder, cruelty and wanton destruction of villages. Regarded as a key ally of Slobodan Milosevic during the effort to expel non-Serbs from parts of Croatia, Babic testified against the former Yugoslav president at his trial in The Hague in 2002. Reuters has more.