Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian warlord who orchestrated the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo during the Balkan wars, has died in a UN prison at The Hague at the age of 84.
He was jailed for life in 2017 for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in 1992-95.
After the Bosnian War, he went on the run for 16 years until he was finally tracked down in rural Serbia in 2011 and put on trial in the Netherlands.
The sentence for the man known as the “Butcher of Bosnia” was upheld on appeal in 2021. He was given palliative care in the hospital at the UN detention facility, where he died.
In May, a UN court at The Hague rejected a bid for his release from jail as he was nearing the end of his life.
The judge agreed his situation was “dire” but ruled that he was receiving “comprehensive and compassionate treatment” in prison.
Mladić – who never recognised the UN court – had been held at The Hague detention facility since 2011.
Mladić commanded Bosnian Serb forces in the 1990s against the Bosnian Croat and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) armies.
During the war, his troops committed “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia-Herzegovina, besieged the main city of Sarajevo, resulting in the deaths of more than 10,000 people, and carried out the massacre of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica.
