Former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic Dies at 84 While Serving Life Sentence

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army commander who was serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, died on Thursday at a United Nations prison hospital in the Netherlands, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals said. The tribunal confirmed that a judge had ordered a full inquiry into the circumstances of his death.

Mladic, 84, had been convicted in 2017 for orchestrating the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, where at least 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in a UN-designated safe area. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had described the killings as genocide and part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing.

A family member confirmed the death and told the Associated Press that Mladic’s son, Darko, was traveling to The Hague at the time. Former UN human-rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein had previously called Mladic “the epitome of evil” after his conviction.

Mladic had consistently rejected the court’s authority, stating in 2014 that he did not recognise the tribunal and, after his 2017 sentencing, claiming the verdict was a lie.

Reactions to his death were mixed. Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik described the death as a murder and said Mladic was respected by Serbian people. In contrast, Remir Suljagic, head of the Srebrenica memorial, emphasized that the death does not alter the victims’ fate or the legal judgments. A survivor who lost family members in the war expressed gratitude that the tribunal kept Mladic in prison until his death, describing it as justice served.