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

Ratko Mladic, the former commander of Bosnian Serb forces who was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide and other war crimes, died on Thursday in a hospital in The Hague, Dutch authorities said. A relative confirmed the death and said Mladic’s son, Darko, was traveling to the city.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia convicted Mladic in 2017, marking a significant step in the legal process for crimes committed during the 1990s Balkan wars. He had been in custody since his arrest in 2011 after years as a fugitive.

During the Bosnian war, Mladic led the siege of Sarajevo and oversaw the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, in which more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed, an act classified as genocide by the tribunal.

Munira Subasic of the Mothers of Srebrenica expressed mixed emotions about his death, noting that many still deny the crimes. "Today, a major war criminal died," she said.

Mladic was born in 1942 in the village of Bozinovici, near Sarajevo. He rose from a communist-era officer to a nationalist commander as Yugoslavia disintegrated, aligning with Serbian leadership under Slobodan Milošević.

After years on the run, during which he lived in remote compounds and later in a Belgrade suburb, Mladic was captured in May 2011 near the Serbian capital. In court, he rejected the tribunal’s findings, calling the accusations lies.

He had suffered multiple strokes and other health problems while in custody, which contributed to his death at age 84.