Former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, whose murderous role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s led to his moniker as the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, has died, aged 84.
Serbian state media reported the death of Mladic on Thursday. The reports said that Mladic died in a UN prison hospital in The Hague, Netherlands.
A family member of Mladic, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, confirmed the reports for the AP and said Mladic’s son, Darko Mladic, was on the way to the Hague.
The former general was in the jail serving a life sentence after he was convicted of 10 charges, including genocide and war crimes, in 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
One of those charges included his actions in Sbrebrenica in 1995, where he oversaw the massacre of 8000 Muslim men and boys. It came to be known as the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.
The ruthless, blue-eyed former communist officer-turned nationalist warlord, was one of the most notorious figures of the conflict that left more than 100,000 people dead and over 1 million homeless. During the 1992-1995 ethnic war triggered by the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, he commanded his troops to “scorch the brains” of the Bosnian Muslims and boasted of being a “Serbian God.”
When the war started in 1992, Mladic became the commander of the Bosnian Serb troops and took control of large swaths of the country to form a Serb mini-state.
Serbs under Mladic’s control laid siege to the capital, Sarajevo, and other cities and villages, including Sbrebrenica, established concentration camps for detained non-Serb civilians and enemy soldiers, and systematically killed prisoners.
Mladic’s death in prison followed his health battles earlier this year, with his defence team arguing in March that he was in a “state of advanced, irreversible medical decline,” and should be released.
Mladic had to be taken to the emergency room earlier that month for an unspecified health incident, according to the order.
Mladic went into hiding for around 10 years before his arrest in Serbia in May 2011.
The pugnacious Bosnian Serb leader was ejected from a courtroom at the United Nations’ Yugoslav war crimes tribunal during the reading of his verdict, after yelling at judges: “Everything you said is pure lies. Shame on you!”
Mladic was born March 12, 1942, in the tiny Bosnian village of Bozinovici, in the hills 40 kilometres south of Sarajevo. Like other protagonists in the Yugoslav conflict, he imbibed nationalism from his family’s fate in World War II — his own father was killed by Croats.
A communist-era officer, Mladic sided with the Serbs as Yugoslavia disintegrated in the war. Mladic first led a Serb insurgency in Croatia before taking over the Bosnian Serb army that was backed by Serbia and then-President Slobodan Milosevic, who also died in the custody of the Hague court in 2006 while on trial for genocide.
Mladic was known for his obsession with his nation’s history. He saw Bosnia’s war as a chance for revenge against the onetime 500-year-long Ottoman occupation of Serbia. He often referred to Bosnia’s Muslims as Turks and boasted of revenge when his troops overran the protected UN enclave of Srebrenica in 1995.
Mladic was the last major figure to face justice from the conflict that ended more than a quarter-century ago. At the time of his death his appeal was still being heard by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals — a court that deals with remaining cases from the now-closed UN tribunals for Rwanda and the Balkan wars.
Judges denied a request for early release in 2025, writing that his “conditions of detention continue to be in full compliance with the principles of humanity and respect for human dignity.” The court also denied a request from Mladic to travel to Serbia in November to attend a funeral.
with AAP
