Convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic dies at 85

Convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic died Thursday at the age of 85 while serving a life sentence in The Hague, Bosnian news portal Klix.ba reported.

Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, had suffered from serious health problems for years. His family, along with authorities in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Republika Srpska entity, had sought his transfer to Belgrade on health grounds.

A request for his early release was rejected Wednesday.

In June 2021, the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals upheld Mladic’s life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War.

He was convicted on 10 of 11 counts, including genocide in Srebrenica, persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, forcible transfer, terrorizing civilians during the siege of Sarajevo and taking UN personnel hostage.

More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in Srebrenica in July 1995 in a massacre recognized as genocide by international courts.

Mladic evaded justice for nearly 16 years after the war. He was arrested in May 2011 in the Serbian village of Lazarevo, near the northern city of Zrenjanin, and subsequently transferred to The Hague.

His arrest had long been one of the main conditions for Serbia’s progress toward membership in the European Union.