Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic (L) enters the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal for the verdict hearing in his genocide trial in The Hague in November 2017. Mladic has died at age 84, the U.N. said Thursday. File Photo by Peter Dejong/EPA
Aug. 27 (UPI) -- Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic has died at 84 in The Hague, Netherlands, the U.N. said Thursday.
Mladic, known as the "Butcher of Bosnia," was sentenced to life in prison in 2017 for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity during the 1992-95 wars in the former Yugoslavia.
Troops under Mladic's command committed "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia-Herzegovina to forcefully remove the non-Serbian population. More than 10,000 people died in Sarajevo, and his forces massacred 8,000 men and boys in Srebrenica.
He went into hiding after the war in Bosnia for 16 years and was arrested in 2011 in rural Serbia and put on trial in The Haque. His conviction was upheld in 2021 by the U.N. court. In May, the court rejected his early release on humanitarian grounds, later saying he was unable to speak following a suspected stroke.
