The hague: Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military leader known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” has died at the age of 85 while serving a life sentence for war crimes and genocide in The Hague, his family confirmed.

According to National Iraqi News Agency, Mladic had been suffering from serious health issues in recent years. His family, with backing from authorities in Serbia and Republika Srpska, had sought his transfer to Belgrade to allow him to spend his final days there. Mladic was convicted by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) of genocide in Srebrenica, alongside charges of persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, and other inhumane acts against the civilian population. He was also found guilty of terrorizing Sarajevo’s populace and taking UN personnel hostage, with a conviction on 10 out of 11 charges against him.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) initially sentenced Mladic to life imprisonment in 2017, a decision later confirmed by the Appeals Chamber of the IRMCT. Mladic’s forces infamously entered Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, designated as a “safe area” by the United Nations. Over the next few days, these forces massacred more than 8,000 Bosniaks, aged between 7 and 70, after Dutch troops stationed there had relinquished tens of thousands of Bosniaks to them.

Following the war, Mladic evaded arrest and trial for over 15 years before being captured on May 26, 2011, in the village of Lazarevo near Zrenjanin, Serbia. He was subsequently transferred to the ICTY in The Hague. Mladic remains one of the most prominent figures associated with the Bosnian War’s military operations and a symbol of the widespread atrocities committed against civilians, particularly the Srebrenica genocide and the prolonged siege of Sarajevo.