Ratko Mladic: The ‘Butcher Of Bosnia’ Who Was Convicted Of Genocide

Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime commander convicted by an international court for genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995, has died at the age of 84.

Serbian state broadcaster RTS reported on August 27 that he had died in a prison hospital in The Hague after suffering several strokes.

Mladic was convicted of one count of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity, and four counts of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Netherlands in 2017 — more than 20 years after he was indicted.

Known to his victims and others as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” Mladic was found guilty of ordering the massacre of more than 7,000 men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995 — the worst single atrocity perpetrated in Europe since the end of World War II.

Since the ICTY verdict, the number of victims from Srebrenica has risen to more than 8,000.

Mladic was also deemed responsible by the ICTY for the siege and bombardment of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo — a crime against humanity that, according to the international court, resulted in the deaths of 4,548 Bosnian soldiers and 4,954 civilians. An estimated 50,000 people were also wounded during the siege.

The ICTY found that the wartime president of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Serb-majority entity, Radovan Karadzic, had set the policies that led to acts of genocide and crimes against humanity while Mladic, his top military commander, carried out the plans.

Mladic and Karadzic were charged with heading a chain of command over operations with the aim of ethnically cleansing Bosnia of non-Serbs through torture, intimidation, the forced evictions of population, and mass killings.

Hailed by Serb nationalists and many Bosnian Serbs as a hero, Mladic commanded Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, a conflict in which more than 100,000 people were killed.

The ICTY found that when Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, Mladic gave direct orders for Bosnian Serb troops to round up and execute Bosniak men and boys who were trying to flee the area.

It found that Bosnian Serb forces later attempted to hide evidence of genocide by reburying the bodies of the victims in mass graves scattered in isolated rural areas around Srebrenica.

The Srebrenica massacre was all the more shocking because the city had been designated by the United Nations as a safe haven for refugees who were fleeing war in other parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The tribunal found that Mladic directed the siege of Sarajevo, which began in April 1992 and lasted more than three years.

In fact, the blockade of Sarajevo by troops under Mladic’s command lasted from April 1992 to February 1996 — more than two months after the signing of the Dayton accords that brought an end to the war. At the time, it was the longest urban siege in modern warfare.

Karadzic was convicted on charges of genocide in 2016, including the Srebrenica massacre, and sentenced to 40 years in prison. His appeal against the verdict was rejected in March 2019 and his sentence was increased to life imprisonment.

Mladic eluded capture for 16 years with the help of the Serbian military, his wartime allies, and his family.

He was arrested in May 2011 in the village of Lazarevo, near the town of Zrenjanin in northern Serbia, after an anonymous tip-off to police was made by someone who had seen a man who looked like Mladic.

From the start of his trial in May 2012, Mladic showed defiance and professed his innocence. At one point early in his trial, Mladic made a throat-cutting gesture toward the mother of one of the victims of the Srebrenica massacre.

“Mladic put into motion, under the control of subordinate officers, the large-scale, well-organized operation that would murder over 7,000 men and boys within a few days,” ICTY Prosecutor Dermot Groome argued during the trial.

“The crimes committed rank among the most heinous known to humankind, and include genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity,” Presiding Judge Alphons Orie said in reading out a summary of the judgment against Mladic in November 2017.

“Many of these men and boys were cursed, insulted, threatened, forced to sing [Serbian] songs, and beaten while awaiting their execution,” Orie said.

ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz called the verdict “a milestone” because it also held Mladic accountable for the detention of tens of thousands of non-Serbs at camps where many were beaten and raped, and for the forced displacement of more than 1 million people in an attempt to redraw Bosnia’s demographic map.

Mladic had been removed from the court minutes before the verdict for angrily shouting, “Everything that you have said is pure lies. Shame on you. It’s all lies!”

After the verdict was delivered, victims and members of the victims group Mothers of Srebrenica said they hoped the verdict would help reconciliation, even though they regretted Mladic was not found guilty on all of the charges brought against him.

Families who lost loved ones in the Srebrenica massacre said there was no adequate punishment for Mladic.

“Even if he lives 1,000 times and is sentenced 1,000 times to life in prison, justice would still not be served,” Ajsa Umirovic, who lost 42 relatives in the Srebrenica genocide, said ahead of the verdict.

Mladic’s verdict was the last to be issued by the tribunal, which was established in The Hague in 1993 to prosecute crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the early 1990s.

In June 2021, a UN court in The Hague rejected an appeal lodged by Mladic and confirmed his life sentence.

Last year, a UN war crimes tribunal rejected Mladić’s request for his urgent release to Serbia on health grounds. In its ruling, the court said Mladic’s condition, while uncertain, was stable and that his treatment in prison in The Hague was of an acceptable standard.

Mladic was born on March 12, 1942, in Kalinovik, in what was then the Independent State of Croatia — a puppet state of Nazi Germany during World War II.

As a member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Mladic began his career in the Yugoslav People’s Army in 1965. He came to prominence during the Balkan wars that broke out after the dissolution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.