Former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic sits in the court room in The Hague, Netherlands, June 8, 2021, where the United Nations court delivers its verdict in the appeal of Mladic against his convictions for genocide and other crimes and his life sentence for masterminding atrocities throughout the Bosnian war.
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BELGRADE, Serbia — Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general who oversaw atrocities in Bosnia in the 1990s, has died in prison at age 84, the Serbian state RTS television and the official Bosnian Serb television reported.
The reports said that Mladic died in a U.N. prison hospital in The Hague, Netherlands. A family member of Mladic, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, confirmed the reports for the AP and said Mladic's son, Darko Mladic, was on the way to the Hague.
U.N. court officials told the AP in a statement that they could not immediately confirm Mladic's death.
The U.N. tribunal for war crimes committed during the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s sentenced Mladic to life in prison in 2017 in what was considered a key step toward bringing justice to the victims. He had been in custody since 2011 after many years on the run.
The ruthless, blue-eyed former communist officer-turned nationalist warlord was one of the most notorious figures of the conflict that left more than 100,000 people dead and over 1 million homeless. He commanded his troops to "scorch the brains" of the Bosnian Muslims and boasted of being a "Serbian God."
When the ethnic war in Bosnia started in 1992, Mladic became the commander of the Bosnian Serb troops and took control of large swaths of the country to form a Serb mini-state.
Serbs under Mladic's control laid siege to the capital, Sarajevo, and other cities and villages, established concentration camps for detained non-Serb civilians and enemy soldiers, and systematically killed prisoners.
A mural of former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic vandalized with paint in Belgrade, Serbia, Sept. 20, 2022.
Darko Vojinovic/AP
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In Sarajevo, Serb troops kept the city isolated while killing civilians with snipers. In 1995, Mladic's troops slaughtered more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica — the only post-World War II case of genocide in Europe.
But Mladic himself and his admirers among the Serbs have never repented. He was seen by many as a patriot fighting for the first pan-Serbian state. Defiant, Mladic acted bullishly during his trial and yelled at the judges when sentenced to life in prison.
Mladic was born March 12, 1942, in the tiny Bosnian village of Bozinovici, in the hills 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Sarajevo. Like other protagonists in the Yugoslav conflict, he imbibed nationalism from his family's fate in World War II — his own father was killed by Croats.
Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic (center) speaks with Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic (right) in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka, in 1994.
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A communist-era officer, Mladic sided with the Serbs as Yugoslavia disintegrated in the war. Mladic first led a Serb insurgency in Croatia before taking over the Bosnian Serb army that was backed by Serbia and then-President Slobodan Milosevic, who also died in the custody of the Hague court in 2006 while on trial for genocide.
Mladic was known for his obsession with his nation's history. He saw Bosnia's war as a chance for revenge against the onetime 500-year-long Ottoman occupation of Serbia. He often referred to Bosnia's Muslims as Turks and boasted of revenge when his troops overran the protected U.N. enclave of Srebrenica in 1995.
