‘Butcher of Bosnia’ Ratko Mladic dies, says Serbian state media

Belgrade: Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military chief known as the "Butcher of Bosnia" for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, has passed away, according to Serbian state broadcaster RTS on Thursday. Mladic, who had been suffering from multiple strokes in recent months, was serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity at The Hague.

The ICTY indicted him in 1995, and he evaded capture for 16 years before his arrest in May 2011. Mladic, who led a brutal trio of military commanders under Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, oversaw the Srebrenica slaughter, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, where 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were executed. Despite appeals for his release due to his deteriorating health, the Hague tribunal denied his requests.

Mladic insisted on his innocence throughout the trial, hurling insults at judges and accusing them of being pawns of the Western powers. The tribunal labeled his actions as "amongst the most heinous known to humankind" and former UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein described him as "the epitome of evil."