Found guilty of ten out of eleven count charges of war crimes levelled against him, 74 years old Ratko Mladic will now spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Ratko Mladic was the Butcher of Bosnia – the general who oversaw the four-year siege of Sarajevo and massacre in Srebrenica in July 1995. Under his command, tens of thousands were slaughtered. For a time, he was the world’s most wanted man, but as much as the world condemned him as a war criminal, his supporters feted him as the defender of Bosnian-Serb interests.
For years, they refused to believe the allegations of genocide. It was only once a video was discovered in 2005 showing the execution of six young Bosnian Muslims outside Srebrenica that the doubts started to fade. Mladic went on the run, evading capture and living under protection for 16 years. His family tried to have him declared dead, falsely claiming they had not seen or heard from him in years.
A Belgian judge gave his verdict in The Hague this morning and Mladic has been sentenced to live imprisonment.
