Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb military commander convicted of genocide, has died in a United Nations prison hospital in The Hague. He was 84 years old. His death on August 27 was confirmed by a UN official and his lawyer.
Known as the "Butcher of Bosnia," Mladić was a key military architect of the "Greater Serbia" project. In 2017, judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia convicted him of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was sentenced to life in prison for orchestrating the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where at least 8,000 Muslims were killed in a UN-designated safe area, marking Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.
Beyond Srebrenica, the ruthless former communist officer-turned-nationalist warlord led forces that carried out a years-long siege of Sarajevo, using shells and snipers. He commanded his troops to "scorch the brains" of Bosnian Muslims during a war that left more than 100,000 people dead. After the conflict, Mladić spent 15 years as a fugitive before his arrest in Serbia in 2011.
Mladić died while serving his life sentence after suffering several strokes. For many, he represented the horrors of the Bosnian War.