Ratko Mladić walks through the streets of Srebrenica. Cameras follow him. His soldiers have just captured an enclave that the United Nations had designated a “safe area,” where tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims had sought protection. He appears completely confident about what is to come. He speaks to the cameras, congratulates his men, and presents the capture of the town as a Serbian victory. Shortly afterward, he appears before terrified civilians. He hands out sweets to children. He assures them that there is no reason to be afraid. At the same time, the men and boys begin to be separated from the women.

Over the following days, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys would be killed. Thousands were systematically executed in warehouses, schools, fields, and makeshift detention sites. Their bodies were buried in mass graves. Months later, in an effort to conceal the crimes, several of these graves were opened and the remains moved elsewhere. Years later, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled that this constituted genocide and that Mladić had intended to destroy the Muslims of Srebrenica as part of the protected group of Bosnian Muslims.

From that week onward, his name was no longer associated merely with another general in the wars that tore Yugoslavia apart. He became the “Butcher of Bosnia.” Thirty-one years later, Ratko Mladic died at the age of 84 in a hospital at the United Nations detention facility in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Just one week earlier, he had made a final attempt to be released.

The final request

On August 13, doctors at the detention facility recorded a deterioration in his health. The official medical report stated that he had entered the final stage of his life and that treatment was no longer primarily aimed at addressing his medical problems but at relieving his pain. The wording was clear: death could come at any time.

On August 18, his lawyers requested his urgent release on humanitarian grounds and his transfer to a hospital or palliative-care facility in Serbia. Mladić wanted to spend his final days near his family.

The response came on August 20 and was again negative. The court acknowledged that he was close to death, but ruled that he was still receiving adequate care in The Hague and that his imminent death did not, by itself, create a right to release. He had already spent slightly more than 15 years in detention following his arrest in 2011.

A Yugoslav officer who became a general in another war

Mladić was born in the Kalínovik area of Bosnia during World War II. His father fought with the Partisans and was killed in 1945. His son would follow in his father’s military footsteps. He attended the military academies of socialist Yugoslavia, and for decades his career was not particularly different from that of thousands of professional officers in the Yugoslav People’s Army. He served in various parts of the federation and gradually rose through the ranks.

But the country to which he had sworn allegiance began to disintegrate. In 1991, he was in Knin, Croatia, as armed clashes between Croats and Serbs had already begun. A year later, the conflict spread to Bosnia.

On May 12, 1992, Mladić became commander of the General Staff of the newly established Army of Republika Srpska. He would remain at the top until 1996. Radovan Karadžić was the political leader of the Bosnian Serbs. Mladić was their general. And the Bosnian War had already begun to take the form that would make it one of the darkest European conflicts since 1945.

Cities changed their populations by force. People were expelled from homes in which their families had lived for generations. Detention camps filled with Muslims and Croats. Killings, torture, and rape became part of a campaign aimed at permanently removing non-Serb populations from territories that the Bosnian Serbs considered their own. More than one million people were displaced within the country or forced to flee abroad.

Ratko Mladić in 1994

Sarajevo became a firing range

The capital of Bosnia was surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces. The siege lasted nearly four years. From the hills surrounding the city, artillery and mortars struck residential areas. Snipers watched roads and intersections. Residents learned to run across an avenue, wait for hours for a little water, and try to determine from which direction the next bullet might come.

More than 10,000 people lost their lives during the siege. On February 5, 1994, a shell struck the Markale market. Sixty-eight people were killed and more than 140 wounded. It was not an isolated attack. The tribunal examined a long series of attacks on civilians: people going to collect water, gathering firewood, or walking with their children. It concluded that the sniping and shelling were not simply a collateral consequence of the siege. Their purpose was to terrorize the population, and Mladić was convicted for his role in that campaign. But Sarajevo was not the final chapter. In the summer of 1995, the Bosnian Serbs turned toward Srebrenica.

“You can survive or disappear”

The town in eastern Bosnia had filled with refugees. The United Nations had declared it a safe area, and a small contingent of Dutch peacekeepers was stationed there to protect it. At least on paper. On March 8, 1995, Karadžić issued the infamous Directive 7, calling for conditions of “complete insecurity” and no hope of survival to be created for the population of Srebrenica. On March 31, Mladić signed his own operational directive. The Krivaja-95 plan followed. The attack began on July 6.

Five days later, Mladić entered the town. Thousands of women, children, and elderly people headed toward the Dutch peacekeepers’ base at Potočari. Most of the men attempted to escape through the forests toward Tuzla. During meetings at the Hotel Fontana on July 11 and 12, Mladić faced representatives of the United Nations and the Muslims.

Refugees from Srebrenica in a truck en route to Tuzla, Monday, March 29, 1993.

The tribunal later documented his statements and conduct. At different points, he spoke of people who could “survive or disappear.” Buses began transporting the women and children. The men were detained. Beginning on July 13, mass executions commenced. The operation did not last a few hours. It unfolded at multiple locations, involving the transportation of prisoners, firing squads, machinery used to dig graves, and later a second operation to destroy the evidence.

The tribunal was unequivocal about Mladić’s role: he commanded the forces that carried out the operation, and his contribution was so decisive that the crimes could not have been committed in the manner in which they were without him. Srebrenica became the worst crime in Europe since World War II. And Mladić’s name became impossible to separate from it.

UN hostages tied to military targets

A few weeks before Srebrenica, Mladić had also confronted NATO. Following the alliance’s air strikes against Bosnian Serb targets in May 1995, his forces captured members of UNPROFOR. Hundreds of peacekeepers and UN observers were detained. Some were tied — more precisely, chained — near military installations and other potential targets, so that their presence would deter further NATO strikes. The general who, just a few years earlier, had worn the uniform of a multinational Yugoslav army had come to use United Nations personnel as hostages.

In July of that year, The Hague issued its first indictment against him. But the war continued, and Mladić remained free.

A refugee from Srebrenica cries at a refugee camp in Tuzla, recalling scenes from the UN “safe area” that had been captured by Serbian forces.

The wanted man who, for years, was not hiding particularly well

The Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war in late 1995. It did not send Mladić to The Hague. For several years he remained in Serbia, with access to people and structures capable of protecting him. After the fall of Slobodan Milošević, and as pressure on Belgrade increased, his life gradually moved underground. The international arrest warrant remained active. His capture had become one of Europe’s major demands of Serbia.

Nearly 16 years passed. On May 26, 2011, Serbian authorities entered a house in the village of Lazarevo, near Zrenjanin.

The elderly man they found there bore little resemblance to the confident general who had walked through Srebrenica in 1995. He was Ratko Mladić. Five days later, he was transferred to The Hague.

377 witnesses and one sentence: life imprisonment.

The trial began in May 2012. A total of 377 witnesses testified in the courtroom — 169 for the prosecution and 208 for the defense. The presentation of evidence lasted more than four years. On November 22, 2017, the verdict was announced.

Guilty of genocide in Srebrenica.
Guilty of persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, and forcible transfer of populations.
Guilty of the murder and terrorization of Sarajevo civilians. Guilty of taking United Nations personnel hostage.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

He was not convicted of genocide in the Bosnian municipalities where crimes had been committed in 1992, because the judges found that the specific legal element required to classify the crimes as genocide had not been proven. He was, however, convicted of the crimes committed there as crimes against humanity and war crimes. His appeal was rejected on June 8, 2021.

One death, two completely different memories

Ratko Mladić never expressed remorse. He challenged the tribunal, repeatedly attacked the prosecutors, and maintained until the end that he had fought for the Serbian people. For that reason, his death will not be viewed in the same way throughout the former Yugoslavia.

In Srebrenica, there are still families who buried fathers, sons, and brothers many years after 1995, when DNA technology made it possible to identify remains found scattered across different mass graves.

A victim’s watch from the massacre, found in a mass grave in the village of Zeleni Jadar, on the outskirts of Srebrenica.

In Sarajevo, the name Mladić remains associated with the years when a European capital became a daily target of artillery and sniper fire. In Serbia, and particularly in Republika Srpska, part of society and the political establishment still views him differently. His photographs have appeared on walls, slogans portray him as a hero, and the legally established genocide at Srebrenica remains a subject of denial or minimization. The AP notes that even after his conviction, Mladić continued to be honored by Serbian nationalists.

The man who entered Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, ultimately died in The Hague, serving a life sentence. But the images of that day remain. So do the graves and the memories.