Sentenced to life in prison, former Bosnian Serb commander General Ratko Mladic, known by the nickname The Butcher of Srebrenica, died today at the age of 84, just a few hours after the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Graciela Gatti Santana rejected another request by his defense for early release on humanitarian grounds, local and world media reported, quoted by BTA.
On August 18, Mladic's defense requested that he be released and transferred to a hospital or palliative care facility in Serbia, citing the likelihood of imminent death and the need for him to spend more time with his family.
In his decision, the judge stated that humanitarian considerations did not justify the exceptional measure of early release. It notes that Mladic is receiving the necessary medical care and has the opportunity to contact his family.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995.
Ratko Mladic was a fugitive from international justice for 16 years until his arrest in Serbia in May 2011, after which he was extradited to The Hague and brought before the International Tribunal.
He was found guilty on 10 out of 11 charges for crimes during his army's 1992 campaign, in which Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Bosnian Croats were expelled from their homes or detained in appalling conditions.
In 2021, the Appeals Chamber upheld his conviction, finding him guilty of genocide against some 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica in July 1995, terrorizing civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, and taking UN staff hostage.
The ruthless, blue-eyed former communist officer turned nationalist military commander was one of the most infamous figures in the conflict, which killed more than 100,000 people and left more than 1 million homeless. He ordered his troops to “fry the brains” of Bosnian Muslims and boasted that he was a “Serbian god“, writes the AP on the occasion of his death.
When the ethnic war in Bosnia broke out in 1992, Mladic took command of the Bosnian Serb troops and established control over vast territories of the country with the aim of creating a Serbian mini-state.
The forces under the command of Mladic besieged the capital Sarajevo, as well as other cities and villages, created concentration camps for detained civilians of non-Serb origin and enemy soldiers, and systematically killed prisoners, the agencies recall.
More than 30 years ago, the capital of today's Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, fell victim to the longest siege in the recent history of Europe - four years of terror, hunger, torture. Half a million bombs and shells caused enormous damage to the city. A total of 11,541 people, including 1,601 children, were killed, and 50,000 were injured, according to data cited by En1 television.
Sarajevo - surrounded on all sides by tanks, rocket launchers and snipers, is located in a valley, so the killers in the mountains had perfect visibility of the defenseless victims.
In 1995, Mladic's troops massacred over 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica - the only case of genocide in Europe since World War II, the world media recall.
However, Mladic himself and his admirers among the Serbs never expressed remorse for these events.
Many perceived him as a patriot fighting for the creation of a single, all-Serbian state. Behaving defiantly and aggressively during his trial at the Hague tribunal, Mladic shouted at the judges when he was sentenced to life imprisonment, AP recalls.
The Serbian official newspaper “Politika“ published an obituary for Ratko Mladic today, in which he is presented as a "national hero, defender of the Serbian people and eternal symbol of Republika Srpska".
The first, albeit unofficial, information about his death was reported by the editor-in-chief of the pro-government TV station "Informer".
While serving his sentence, the former general from the Yugoslav Army suffered several strokes, after which his condition deteriorated further.
In a short episode at the end of July, Ratko Mladic's son said that his father was improving and had even played a game of chess with a priest who visited him behind bars in Scheveningen prison.
The website of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague today does not mention Mladic's death, but it does note his life sentence and that the case of the former Yugoslav general, born on March 12, 1942 in the small mountain village of Bozanovici in Republika Srpska, has been closed.