Convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic died at the age of 84 on Thursday while serving a life sentence in The Hague, Bosnian news portal Klix.ba reported.
Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, had suffered from serious health problems for years.
His family, along with authorities in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Republika Srpska entity, had sought his transfer to Belgrade on health grounds.
A request for his early release was rejected Wednesday.
Known as the "Butcher of Bosnia", he was found guilty notably for his role in the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, deemed genocide by international justice.
In June 2021, the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals upheld Mladic’s life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War.
He was also convicted on 10 of 11 counts, including genocide in Srebrenica, persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, forcible transfer, terrorising civilians and taking UN personnel hostage.
Mladic evaded justice for nearly 16 years after the war.
He was arrested in May 2011 in the Serbian village of Lazarevo, near the northern city of Zrenjanin, and subsequently transferred to The Hague.
His arrest had long been one of the main conditions for Serbia’s progress toward membership in the European Union.
