Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general who led brutal military campaigns during the Bosnian War of the 1990s and was later convicted of genocide, has died at the age of 84.
According to reports from Serbian state television RTS and the official Bosnian Serb television, Mladic passed away in a United Nations prison hospital located in The Hague, Netherlands. An anonymous family member confirmed the death, noting that Mladic's son, Darko Mladic, was traveling to The Hague. At the time of the initial reports, U.N. court officials stated they could not immediately verify his death.
Mladic, widely referred to as the "Butcher of Bosnia," was sentenced to life in prison in 2017 by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. His conviction was hailed as a monumental step toward delivering justice to the victims of the Balkan conflicts. His imprisonment followed a decade-long search; he was arrested in 2011 after spending fifteen years on the run.
A former communist military officer who transformed into a ruthless nationalist warlord, Mladic became one of the most infamous figures of a war that claimed over 100,000 lives and left more than 1 million people displaced. When ethnic conflict erupted in Bosnia in 1992, he assumed command of the Bosnian Serb forces, seizing vast territories to establish a Serb mini-state. Under his leadership, forces besieged major cities, set up concentration camps for non-Serb civilians and captured soldiers, and carried out systematic executions.
In the besieged capital of Sarajevo, Mladic’s troops cut off the city and deployed snipers to terrorize and kill civilians. In 1995, his forces executed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the enclave of Srebrenica, an atrocity recognized as the only genocide in Europe since World War II.
Despite the global condemnation, Mladic and his supporters remained unrepentant. Many nationalist Serbs viewed him as a patriot who fought to establish a unified Serbian state. During his trial, Mladic behaved defiantly, shouting at the judges during his sentencing, "Everything you said is pure lies. Shame on you!"
Born on March 12, 1942, in the small Bosnian village of Bozinovici, located 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Sarajevo, Mladic grew up influenced by the legacy of World War II, during which his father was killed by Croats. As Yugoslavia collapsed, Mladic, then a communist-era officer, aligned himself with Serbian nationalists. He initially led a Serb insurgency in Croatia before taking command of the Bosnian Serb army, which received backing from Serbia and its president, Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic also died in U.N. custody in 2006 while on trial for genocide.
Mladic was deeply obsessed with Serbian history, viewing the 1990s conflict as an opportunity to exact revenge for the 500-year-old Ottoman occupation of Serbia. He frequently referred to Bosnian Muslims as "Turks." Following the capture of the U.N.-protected enclave of Srebrenica in 1995, he declared, "The time has come … for revenge against Turks in these regions."
During the Srebrenica massacre, Serb forces overran the U.N. "safe haven," separated men and boys, stripped them, executed them, and used bulldozers to bury their bodies in mass graves over the course of a week. Survivors of the massacre recalled a chilling moment when Mladic handed out candy to rounded-up Muslim children in the town square, patting one child on the head and falsely promising that they would be safe.
Mladic frequently displayed extreme arrogance and a belief in his own absolute authority. He once told his troops, "When I give you guarantees, it's as if they are given by God." He was known to identify himself to air traffic controllers as "Ratko Mladic — The Serbian God" to clear his helicopter's landing path.
During the siege of Sarajevo in 1992, Mladic’s radio transmissions were intercepted and recorded by local police. In one unscrambled broadcast, he ordered his artillery to target specific neighborhoods, saying, "Turn toward Velesici, there are no Serbs there," before commanding his gunmen to "scorch their brains."
Following his indictment for genocide, Mladic went into hiding in 1996, initially taking refuge in Han Pijesak, a heavily fortified military bunker in eastern Bosnia built for former Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito. There, he lived a quiet domestic life with his wife, Bosa, tending to bees and goats. He reportedly named his 23 goats after foreign leaders he despised, including former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. He occasionally left the compound under heavy guard to attend military anniversaries and religious festivals, such as St. Vitus Day.
As pressure intensified, Mladic moved to a villa in Belgrade, Serbia, where he lived openly for a time, attending his son’s wedding, soccer matches, and elite restaurants. Following the ouster of Milosevic in 2000, Mladic went fully underground in 2002. He managed to evade capture until May 2011, when police found him living in a modest house owned by a relative in a village near Belgrade.
By the time of his trial, Mladic appeared frail, having suffered multiple strokes while on the run. He was hospitalized several times during his years in custody before his death at age 84.
