Bosnian Serb commander and war criminal Ratko Mladic dies in prison

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military chief dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia” for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, has died, Serbian state broadcaster RTS reported on Thursday.

Mladic, 84, who had suffered several strokes in recent months, was serving a life sentence in The Hague for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity after overseeing the Srebrenica slaughter, Europe’s worst act of bloodshed since second world war.

Serbian state officials and Mladic’s family had appealed for his release due to his failing health, but those calls were rejected by The Hague tribunal.

He was the military face of a brutal trio, led on the political side by ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, as the former Yugoslavia descended into carnage after the fall of communism.

The 1992-95 war left around 100,000 people dead and 2.2 million displaced.

The most infamous atrocity was committed in Srebrenica, where Serb forces under Mladic’s command executed 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys who had sought shelter in what was meant to be a UN-protected enclave.