Ratko Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb army who was convicted of genocide, has died in a UN detention center in The Hague, according to infohub.kz.
Belgrade's Informer TV and Serbian broadcaster RTS reported that the 84-year-old Mladic was serving a life sentence. In April, his lawyers filed a request for early release, citing his deteriorating health. Mladic had been in the prison hospital for two years, bedridden or confined to a wheelchair. After a "medical incident" (suspected stroke) during a video call with his son Darko, his condition worsened: he could not speak coherently, including with doctors. The defense claimed that the provided interpreter "supplemented" Mladic's words, turning one-syllable answers into full sentences, which made it impossible to assess his condition.
The petition stated: "Mladic needs constant monitoring and diagnostic tests that he does not receive or cannot receive in the prison hospital, but which he could receive in Serbia, to alleviate his suffering and improve his quality of life and meet a dignified death." Serbia's Justice Minister Nenad Vujic also asked for Mladic's release.
From 1992 to 1995, Mladic was chief of staff of the Army of Republika Srpska. On May 26, 2011, he was arrested in Serbia and extradited to The Hague. As Reuters notes, Serbian authorities long hesitated to move against a man who was a hero to a significant portion of Serbian nationalists. He was occasionally spotted at horse races in Belgrade or at football matches. The search intensified only in 2009, when Serbia planned to join the European Union. When he was arrested in 2011, a protest was held in Belgrade.
On November 22, 2017, the Hague tribunal sentenced him to life imprisonment for war crimes during the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995. In 1995, as established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, soldiers of the Army of Republika Srpska under his command killed about 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica. After that, Mladic was dubbed the "Bosnian Butcher."
Additionally, Mladic was accused of ordering the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted from April 1992 to late February 1996, during which Serbian forces occupying the hills around the city deliberately killed civilians, including with sniper fire. In 2010, Mladic's diaries were discovered, in which, according to Repubblica, he wrote that his priority was to rid the area of the Muslim population.
The tribunal found him guilty of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Mladic did not admit guilt and said he was "only defending his people." When he was sentenced to life in 2017, he shouted: "This is all lies, you are all liars!"