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Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb general convicted of genocide, dies at 84
๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ฌ Singapore /Conflict & Security

Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb general convicted of genocide, dies at 84

From CNA · () English

Translated from English and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Sources not specified Outcome reported
  • Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general convicted of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, has died in UN custody.
  • Mladic was found guilty of orchestrating the slaughter of at least 8,000 Muslims and for his role in the siege of Sarajevo.
  • He had been serving a life sentence and died at the age of 84 in the UN detention center near The Hague.

Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general infamously known as the "Butcher of Bosnia" for his role in orchestrating the Srebrenica massacre, has died in UN custody at the age of 84. Mladic was convicted of genocide for the 1995 massacre of at least 8,000 Muslims in a UN-designated "safe area," Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.

The Srebrenica slaughter was the culmination of a brutal three-year war in which Mladic's nationalist Serb army pounded the besieged capital Sarajevo with relentless artillery fire, killing 10,000 people. The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) determined that Mladic, alongside Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, was part of a criminal conspiracy aimed at "ethnic cleansing" โ€“ the forcible expulsion of non-Serbs to create a Greater Serbia.

I do not recognise this court

โ€” Ratko MladicMladic stated this during an ICTY hearing in 2014.

Mladic, who famously declared "I do not recognise this court" and shouted "This is all lies, you are all liars!" during his trial and sentencing, had been serving a life sentence. His lawyer, Dragan Ivetic, confirmed his death but did not provide a cause. Mladic had spent his final months in the hospital ward of the UN detention center in The Hague.

His son indicated that while official documents listed his birth date as March 12, 1942, he was actually born on March 8, 1943. Mladic, along with Karadzic, was a top fugitive for years after the war's end. He lived discreetly in Belgrade until Milosevic's downfall in 2000. Milosevic himself died in detention in 2006 before a verdict in his own war crimes trial.

This is all lies, you are all liars!

โ€” Ratko MladicMladic shouted this when he was sentenced to life in prison in 2017.
About this summary

Originally published by CNA in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.