Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb military commander convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, has died aged 83 while serving a life sentence.
Military career and wartime role
Mladić led the Bosnian Serb army during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995. He was widely held responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995, the worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War.
Born in 1942 in the village of Kalinovik, in what was then Yugoslavia, Mladić joined the Yugoslav People's Army and rose through its ranks. He took command of the Bosnian Serb forces in 1992, at the start of the conflict that followed Bosnia's declaration of independence.
Indictment and arrest
He was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1995 for genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war. He evaded capture for more than a decade, living under an assumed identity in Serbia, until his arrest in 2011.
His trial opened at the tribunal in The Hague in 2012. In 2017, judges found him guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. An appeal chamber upheld the conviction and sentence in 2021.
Legacy and response
Mladić remained a polarising figure. Many Bosniaks and international observers saw him as the embodiment of wartime brutality, while some Serb nationalists regarded him as a hero. His death was confirmed by his son, Darko Mladić, who said his father had died in hospital in The Hague, where he had been held.
The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, which took over the tribunal's functions, confirmed that Mladić had died on 26 August 2026. The cause of death was not immediately announced.
