Ratko Mladic, former general convicted of Bosnia genocide, dies

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb warlord responsible for atrocities committed during the Bosnian War in the 1990s, has passed away at the age of 84 while incarcerated, according to reports from Serbian and Bosnian Serb television networks. Mladic had been held in a United Nations prison hospital in The Hague, Netherlands. His son, Darko Mladic, was reportedly on his way to The Hague to receive the news.

The United Nations tribunal for war crimes committed during the Yugoslav conflicts sentenced Mladic to life in prison in 2017, marking a significant step towards justice for the victims. Mladic was in custody since 2011, after spending years evading capture. A ruthless and blue-eyed former communist officer turned nationalist warlord, Mladic was one of the most infamous figures of the conflict, which resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people and displaced more than 1 million.

As the commander of Bosnian Serb troops, Mladic oversaw the siege of Sarajevo and other cities, established concentration camps for non-Serb civilians and enemy soldiers, and orchestrated the systematic killing of prisoners. Perhaps most notorious was the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, where his troops killed over 8,000 Muslim men and boys, marking the only post-World War II case of genocide in Europe.