Dentist Accused of War Crimes

Milan Babic, the bespectacled dentist who led the Serb rebel insurgency into a lost four-year war in Croatia a decade ago, was indicted for war crimes yesterday.

Mr Babic, who did the bidding of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade before turning against his patron and accusing him of treason, was charged with five counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes by the tribunal in The Hague. He is accused of orchestrating the ethnic cleansing of Croats in rebel Serb-held parts of Croatia in 1991-92. Mr Babic's power base was the Croatian hilltown of Knin, which fell to the Croats in the summer of 1995.

Mr Babic, still at large, was believed to be living quietly in the Belgrade area, abandoning his native area for the Serbian capital just before the final Croatian offensive of 1995.

Last year he testified, first as a protected witness, against Mr Milosevic who is in the dock on genocide charges in The Hague.

He told the court that Mr Milosevic had masterminded the rebel insurgency that Mr Babic led before abandoning the ethnic Serbs of Croatia.