Convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Mladić dies aged 84

What the report says

Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb former military commander convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, has died aged 84 in a UN detention facility at The Hague, according to BBC World News. The report said he had been serving a life sentence after his 2017 conviction over abuses committed during the 1992-95 wars in the former Yugoslavia, with that verdict later upheld on appeal in 2021.

BBC World News said Mladić had spent years on the run after the Bosnian war before being found in rural Serbia in 2011 and transferred to The Hague for trial. In May, a UN court rejected an appeal for his release on health grounds, while acknowledging that his condition was serious. He had been receiving palliative care in the prison hospital when he died.

Mladić led Bosnian Serb forces during the conflict and became closely associated with some of its worst atrocities. The BBC said his troops carried out ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina, besieged Sarajevo, and were responsible for the killing of about 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica. His death closes a chapter on one of the most prominent prosecutions from the wars in the Balkans, which remain deeply significant in regional and international justice efforts.