Croat Serb admits persecution
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Babic: "Deep sense of shame and remorse"
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AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) -- Ex-rebel Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic asked Croats to forgive their "brother Serbs" on Tuesday after pleading guilty at The Hague to persecuting them in a Serb campaign to seize territory in Croatia in 1991-92.
Babic, a central figure in the breakaway Krajina Serb republic after Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, confessed at The Hague war crimes tribunal Tuesday to a crime against humanity in a plea agreement with prosecutors.
U.N. tribunal prosecutors regard Babic as one of former Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's key allies during a campaign to expel non-Serbs from about a third of Croatian territory in the early 1990s.
"I ask from my brother Croats to forgive us, their brother Serbs, and I pray for the Serb people to turn to the future and to achieve the kind of compassion that will make it possible to forgive the crimes," he said.
Judges still have to decide whether to accept the plea agreement, which proposes that four other counts of war crimes, including murder, should be dismissed against the burly 47-year-old dentist.
Babic, whose posts in Serb Krajina included prime minister and foreign minister before the enclave was recaptured in a huge Croatian offensive in 1995, told the court he felt a "deep sense of shame and remorse" over his actions and had asked God to help him repent.
"Innocent people were persecuted. Innocent people were evicted forcibly from their houses and innocent people were killed. Even after I learned what had happened I kept silent. Even worse I continued in my office and I became personally responsible for the inhumane treatment of innocent people," Babic said.
"I have allowed myself to take part in the worst kind of persecution of people simply because they were Croats and not Serbs," Babic told the court in a Web cast of the hearing.
"These crimes and my participation therein can never be justified," he said.
Babic, who testified against Milosevic at his trial in The Hague in 2002, stood up to address the court. Milosevic is on trial charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Prosecutors have recommended a maximum jail sentence of 11 years for Babic as part of the plea agreement. Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic, who admitted responsibility for atrocities in the 1992-95 Bosnia war, was jailed for 11 years last year.
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