War criminal Mladić dies in prison at 84

Convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladić has died in a UN prison at The Hague aged 84, the BBC reported on August 27.

News of his death was confirmed by a UN official, the report said.

Mladić was indicted on 11 counts, including genocide, in connection with the crimes committed during the three-year ethnic conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina which began in 1992.

Serbian troops summarily killed about 8000 Muslim men from Srebrenica in July 1995. Mass graves were discovered in the area after the war.

Prosecutors opened the case against in his trial in July 2012.

Mladić , dubbed “the butcher of the Balkans,” was the last soldier to face war crimes charges in the special tribunal, which was set up to deal with the fallout from the Bosnian war that raged from 1992 to 1995.

The International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted Mladić of charges including crimes against humanity and genocide in 2017, handing him a life sentence. The verdict was confirmed on appeal in 2021.