More than twenty years after he committed horrific genocide in the 1990s Bosnian war, former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic has been sentenced to life in prison.
Known as the Butcher of Bosnia, Mladic orchestrated a brutal massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and the Siege of Sarajevo that saw more than 7000 civilians murdered. The massacre was the greatest European crime since World War II.
When the war ended in 1995, Mladic went into hiding. After being on the run for sixteen years, he was tracked down and arrested in 2011.
Now 74 years old, Mladic has been convicted on 10 of 11 charges. The charges included war crimes and crimes against humanity such as mass rape, terrorism, imprisonment and torture. Mladic has denied all charges.
The family of victims celebrated tearfully as the verdict was announced, with UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein calling Mladic’s prosecution “the epitome of what international justice is all about”, BBC reports.