Timeline: Life of Ratko Mladic, general turned ‘Butcher of Bosnia’

What the report says

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander convicted over the Srebrenica genocide and other wartime crimes, has died in prison in The Hague at the age of 84, Al Jazeera reported. The outlet said he had been serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and died after repeated requests from Serbian authorities for an early release or transfer for medical treatment were rejected.

Al Jazeera’s timeline traces Mladic’s life from his birth in 1942 in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, through a long military career in the Yugoslav National Army, to his rise during the breakup of Yugoslavia. It said he later commanded Bosnian Serb forces during the siege of Sarajevo and the capture of Srebrenica in July 1995, when more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed after the UN-declared safe area fell.

The report also notes that Mladic was indicted in 1995 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, remained at large for years, and was arrested in Serbia in 2011 before being transferred to The Hague. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017. His death has renewed attention on the legacy of the Bosnian war and on continuing disputes over how the crimes are remembered and described in the region.