Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladić, who was serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, died on Thursday at a United Nations detention facility in the Netherlands.
Mladić, 84, was convicted over his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed after the town had been declared a United Nations safe area.
The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) have recognized the killings of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica as genocide.
The ICTY sentenced Mladić to life imprisonment in 2017 after finding him guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war. The charges covered crimes committed during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the Srebrenica massacre.
At the time of the verdict, Judge Alphons Orie said the crimes for which Mladić was convicted ranked among the gravest known to humanity and included genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity.
Mladić appealed the conviction, but the appeal was rejected in 2021. Subsequent requests for release on compassionate grounds were also denied.
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