Ratko Mladic, the former commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serb army convicted of genocide and war crimes for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, died on Thursday in hospital in The Hague at age 84, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals confirmed. Mladic was serving a life sentence upheld on appeal in 2021 for ordering the killing of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, a UN-designated safe area, and for the 40-month siege of Sarajevo that killed around 10,000-11,000 people.
Indicted by the ICTY in November 1995, Mladic evaded capture for 16 years while living in Serbia before his arrest in May 2011 and transfer to The Hague. The 1992-1995 Bosnian War left roughly 100,000 dead and 2.2 million displaced, with the tribunal describing his crimes as among the most heinous known to humankind.
Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik said Mladic was respected by Serbian people, while Srebrenica survivors said his death does not bring closure to genocide denial and a still-divided country. The Hague court ordered a full inquiry into the circumstances of his death.