BELGRADE – Today, convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić died at age 84 at the United Nations detention unit in The Hague while serving a life sentence, Radio Television of Serbia reported. Mladić was top military general for the Bosnian Serbs during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995. Opponents and victims called him the “Butcher of Bosnia”.
His army surrounded the city of Sarajevo for nearly four years, killing more than 10,000 civilians with shelling and snipers. In addition, he directed the mass killing of around 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in July 1995 in the town of Srebrenica (Srebrenica genocide).
Mladić escaped justice and hid in Serbia for 16 years after the war. Police found and arrested him in a small Serbian village called Lazarevo in 2011.
A UN tribunal in The Hague found him guilty of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in 2017. The court sentenced him to life in prison.
Judges rejected his final appeal and kept his life sentence in 2021. Ratko Mladić spent final years in the UN detention unit and died after a long illness.
