‘Butcher of Bosnia’: Ratko Mladic, Architect of Srebrenica Genocide, is Dead at 83

Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general convicted of genocide over the killing of about 8,000 Muslim men, women and children at Srebrenica, died Thursday in detention at The Hague aged 83.

His death was announced by Serbian state media.

Mladic, widely known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” was serving a life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

The Srebrenica killings in July 1995 became Europe’s deadliest massacre since World War II and the defining crime of Mladic’s military career.

Srebrenica Genocide

Mladic commanded Bosnian Serb forces when they overran Srebrenica, a Muslim community under United Nations protection, in July 1995.

Over the following days, his troops hunted down and captured thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys before carrying out mass executions. Victims were bound and shot, while women were raped.

The bodies were initially buried before Serb forces later dug up remains and dispersed them among other mass graves in an organized attempt to conceal evidence.

Shortly before the killings, Mladic had presented himself before cameras alongside terrified civilians.

On July 12, as his forces prepared the executions, he told women and children: “No one will be harmed.”

Life Sentence for Genocide

An international tribunal convicted Mladic in 2017 of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Presiding judge Alphons Orie said his offenses ranked “among the most heinous known to humankind.”

Mladic appealed. The judgment was upheld in 2021.

His convictions also covered crimes committed during the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo, where about 10,000 people were killed, including 1,500 children.

Bosnian Serb forces surrounding the capital bombarded the city from the mountains and used snipers against civilians.

Judges also convicted Mladic over the persecution and extermination of non-Serbs across large areas of Bosnia.

Commander of Bosnian Serb Forces

Mladic had risen through the Yugoslav People’s Army before becoming commander of the Bosnian Serb army as Yugoslavia fractured into separate states.

Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia’s nationalist president, sought to establish a Greater Serbia as wars erupted between Serbs and Slovenes, Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians.

About 100,000 people were killed in the wider conflict and more than 2.5 million displaced.

In 1992, one month after Bosnia declared independence, Mladic’s forces began the siege of Sarajevo.

His political superior, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, was later prosecuted on charges closely resembling those brought against Mladic.

Karadzic was convicted in 2016, and his sentence was increased to life imprisonment three years later.

Sixteen Years As a Fugitive

The international tribunal indicted Mladic in 1995 over Srebrenica and Sarajevo, but he remained at large for almost 16 years.

For a period, he moved openly through military facilities and appeared publicly in Belgrade.

His position became more precarious after Milosevic fell from power in 2000 and was transferred to The Hague the following year.

Mladic then went underground, protected, according to accounts, by contacts inside Serbian military and intelligence structures.

He was finally arrested on May 26, 2011, at a cousin’s home in a farming village north of Belgrade.

Two loaded pistols were beside him, but he surrendered without resistance.

“Congratulations,” he told the officers. “I’m the one you’ve been looking for.”

His capture ended one of the longest international manhunts of the era and removed a major obstacle in Serbia’s attempts to advance toward membership of the European Union.

From Military Command to The Hague

By the time Mladic appeared before judges, his health had deteriorated following at least two strokes suffered while he was in hiding.

He remained combative in court. During his first appearance in June 2011, he described the charges against him as “obnoxious” and “monstrous,” and repeatedly clashed with judges during the proceedings.

At another hearing, he shouted that statements from the bench were “a pure lie” before being removed from the courtroom.

The proceedings became one of the last major cases handled by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which prosecuted nearly 100 people over atrocities committed during the Balkan wars.

Legacy of Srebrenica

Mladic continued to retain support among some Serbs, even after the scale of the crimes attributed to his forces became established in international court proceedings.

But his name became inseparable internationally from Srebrenica and the campaign of persecution carried out against Bosnian Muslims and Croats.

The killings at Srebrenica helped intensify pressure in Washington and Europe for military intervention.

NATO bombing later weakened Bosnian Serb forces, and the Dayton Accords brought the Bosnian war to an end in December 1995.

Mladic spent his final years imprisoned in The Hague, where the genocide conviction and life sentence against him remained in force until his death.