UN Court Confirms Life Sentence For Ratko Mladic ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ In Genocide Case

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

by Stefan Bos, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, who became known as the ‘Butcher of Bosnia,’ has lost his appeal against a 2017 conviction for genocide and crimes against humanity.

The United Nations court at The Hague confirmed the life sentence for his role in the killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.

The massacre, in an enclave supposed to be under United Nations protection, was the worst atrocity in Europe since World War Two. It led to the fall of the Dutch government after it emerged that Dutch UN troops failed to protect the enclave.

Mladic has accused the court of Western bias while his defense claimed he wasn’t near the massacre. The judgment Tuesday means the 79-year-old former general who the court suggested terrorized Bosnia throughout the war will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Presiding Judge Prisca Matimba Nyambe of Zambia said the court dismissed Mladic’s appeal “in its entirety” and affirmed his life sentence. It also rejected a request by prosecutors against Mladic’s acquittal on one other count of genocide linked to ethnic purges early in the war.

Mladic joins his former political master, ex-Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, in serving a life sentence for masterminding ethnic bloodshed in the Bosnian war that left more than 100,000 dead and millions homeless.

Commentators noted that the former military strongman had become a frail elderly man whose ill health delayed this final judgment.

He once commanded troops linked to atrocities ranging from “ethnic cleansing” campaigns to the siege of Sarajevo and the war’s bloody climax in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

His legacy continues to divide Bosnia and experts say his dark shadow has spread far beyond the Balkans. To Serbs in Bosnia, he is a war hero who fought to protect his people. To Bosniaks, mostly Muslims, he will always be a villain responsible for their wartime suffering and losses.

Mladic, as well as Karadzic, have been praised by Serb and even foreign far-right supporters for their bloody wartime campaigns against Bosniaks.

Some even carry their pictures with them. The Australian who shot dead dozens of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 was reportedly inspired by the wartime Bosnian Serb leaders, as well as Anders Breivik, the Norwegian white supremacist. He shot dead 77 people in Norway in 2011.

Mladic was one of the last suspects to face trial at the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He was detained in 2011 after 16 years on the run.

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