Architect of Srebrenica Genocide Ratko Mladić Dies in Prison Hospital

 

Convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb general known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” has died at the age of 84 while serving a life sentence in United Nations custody in The Hague.  

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals confirmed that Mladić, who suffered a series of strokes and years of deteriorating health, died in a Hague prison hospital. Judge Graciela Gatti Santana has ordered a full inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death. 

Mladić was one of the most reviled figures of the 1992–1995 Bosnian War, a conflict that left over 100,000 people dead and displaced more than two million.  

In 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted him of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. His convictions, which were upheld on appeal in 2021, centered on two major atrocities:  

The Srebrenica Massacre (1995): The systematic execution of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in a UN-designated "safe area"—the worst single mass killing on European soil since World War II.  

The Siege of Sarajevo: A nearly four-year military campaign of terror in which heavy artillery and sniper fire killed more than 10,000 civilians.  

The tribunal established that Mladić conspired with late Serbian President Slobodan Milošević and Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadžić to forcibly remove non-Serbs from Bosnian territory in pursuit of a "Greater Serbia". Following his conviction, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein described Mladić as "the epitome of evil."  

During the fall of Srebrenica, Mladić famously had his campaign filmed. Cameras captured him boasting that he was giving the town "to the Serb people as a gift" in revenge against historical Ottoman rule. The following day, his forces were recorded handing out sweets to local children and promising safe passage—even as troops readied thousands of men and boys for mass execution.  

Following the end of the war, Mladić went into hiding for 16 years, protected by sympathizers and military elements in Serbia. He was finally tracked down and arrested in a Serbian village in May 2011 before being extradited to face trial in T

Defiant to the end, Mladić repeatedly rejected the court’s authority, shouting during his sentencing that the charges were lies. His death in custody concludes the legal chapter for the chief military commander of the darkest conflict in post-WWII Europe.