- Ratko Mladic, convicted of genocide for orchestrating the 1995 massacre of at least 8,000 Muslims in a U.N.-designated "safe area" of Bosnia, died on Thursday in U.N. custody.
- Mladic died in U.N. custody on Thursday, his lawyer Dragan Ivetic said, without giving a cause.
- He had spent his last months in the hospital ward of the U.N. detention centre holding him in a suburb of The Hague, Ivetic added.
Ratko Mladic, the former general of the Bosnian Serb army, died in U.N. custody on Thursday, as confirmed by his lawyer, Dragan Ivetic. Mladic was convicted of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where over 8,000 Muslims were killed, marking it as Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.12
The massacre was the culmination of a brutal three-year war, during which Mladic's forces relentlessly shelled the capital, Sarajevo, resulting in the deaths of approximately 10,000 people. The victims of Srebrenica were buried in mass graves, with efforts made to relocate bodies to conceal the evidence of the killings.
The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) determined that Mladic, alongside other leaders, was part of a criminal conspiracy aimed at ethnic cleansing to create a Greater Serbia. Mladic famously rejected the tribunal's authority, declaring, “I do not recognise this court”, during a hearing in 2014. Upon receiving a life sentence in 2017, he shouted, “This is all lies, you are all liars!”
Mladic had spent his final months in a hospital ward at the U.N. detention center in The Hague. His official birth date was listed as March 12, 1942, but he was actually born on March 8, 1943, according to his son.3
“Mladic had been serving a life sentence for orchestrating the 1995 massacre of at least 8,000 Muslims in a U.N.-designated safe area, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two. He spent his final months in the hospital ward of the U.N. detention centre in The Hague.”
