BBC News
·27 Aug 2026
Ratko Mladić: The Monstrous Crimes of the 'Butcher of Bosnia'
Ratko Mladić, commander of the Bosnian Serb Army during the 1990s Bosnian War, directed campaigns of ethnic cleansing, the 1,425-day siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed. He was protected for years by Serbian political and military networks before being arrested in 2011 and convicted at The Hague of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Despite his life sentence and the suffering of victims and survivors, Mladić remains a hero to some Serbian nationalists, reflecting the unresolved ethnic and political tensions that persist in Bosnia and Herzegovina.