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 declared that his plea bargain was intended to relieve the collective shame of the Croatian Serbs, and asked his "Croatian brothers to forgive their Serb brothers" for their actions.