Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladić dies in Scheveningen prison at 84

Ratko Mladić, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb army, has died at the age of 84, his lawyer and a UN official told Reuters. His death was first reported by Serbian state media. Mladić had been suffering from poor health for some time. He was serving a life sentence in Scheveningen after being convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia.

Mladić was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and held at the UN-run detention facility in Scheveningen. He requested early release last year, citing his deteriorating health, but the request was rejected.

Born in Herzegovina in 1942, Mladić rose through the ranks of the Yugoslav military. After Yugoslavia began to disintegrate in 1991, he became commander of the Bosnian Serb army.

In 1995, Mladić led Bosnian Serb forces during the Srebrenica massacre, in which around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed. The enclave had been designated a UN-protected safe area and was defended by the Dutchbat battalion, but the Dutch troops were overrun by Bosnian Serb forces.

The newly established International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted Mladić toward the end of the war. He spent years on the run before Serbian authorities arrested him in May 2011 in rural Serbia.

His trial began in The Hague in 2012, and 5 years later he was sentenced to life in prison. Both Mladić and prosecutors appealed the ruling, with prosecutors seeking convictions for additional crimes. In 2021, the appeals court upheld his life sentence.

Mladić maintained that he had only been fulfilling his military duty and defending his country. Despite his convictions, he is still regarded as a war hero by many Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia.