Ratko Mladic, who was found guilty of genocide for his involvement in the 1995 massacre of over 8,000 Muslims in Europe’s most severe atrocity since World War II, has passed away.
His attorney Dragan Ivetic confirmed Mladic’s death while in UN custody on Thursday, citing no specific cause. Mladic had been residing in the hospital section of the UN detention facility near The Hague during his final months, as noted by Ivetic.
The tragic events in Srebrenica marked the brutal conclusion of a conflict that lasted more than three years. Mladic relentlessly bombarded the besieged Sarajevo with artillery, tanks, mortars, and heavy weaponry from his nationalist Serb army, resulting in the deaths of approximately 10,000 individuals.
The victims from Srebrenica were hastily buried in mass graves over a span of four days in July 1995, with some remains later relocated to remote areas to conceal the evidence of the atrocities.
The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) determined the objective behind these actions as “ethnic cleansing,” aimed at forcibly expelling Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and other non-Serbs to establish a Greater Serbia.
Mladic, along with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, were identified by the tribunal as part of a criminal conspiracy to execute the plan.
During an ICTY hearing in 2014, Mladic, known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” disavowed the court’s legitimacy. Upon receiving a life sentence in 2017, he vehemently denounced the verdict as false.
Karadzic, who was also convicted of genocide in 2016, and Mladic were at the top of the ICTY’s most-wanted list for years following the end of the conflict by Western powers. Mladic remained safely hidden in Belgrade until Milosevic was ousted in 2000.
Mladic’s army in Bosnia was notorious for its ruthless tactics, including starvation, rape, and brutal killings of prisoners. Survivors like Munira Subasic, who lost family members in the violence, perceive Mladic as a symbol of the war’s atrocities against Muslims.
Mladic infamously filmed the assault on Srebrenica, deceiving Dutch UN peacekeepers who trusted his false promises of safety for the town’s residents. He defied NATO intervention in 1995 by using UN peacekeepers as human shields.
In 1996, Mladic resigned under Western pressure, following orders from Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic. Born in 1943, Mladic served as an officer in the Yugoslav People’s Army before the country’s dissolution in 1991.
Despite being captured in 2011 without resistance, Mladic’s health deteriorated over the years, with appeals for release on compassionate grounds denied, leading to his passing.
