Ratko Mladi?, the Bosnian-Serb general who orchestrated the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo during the Balkan wars, has died aged 84.

Known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” Mladi? was convicted in 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for masterminding a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Bosnia’s non-Serb population in the early 1990s.

The UN-established court found him guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, persecution, extermination, murder, terror, unlawful attacks on civilians and hostage-taking.

At the time of Mladi?’s indictment, ICTY Judge Fouad Riad described the actions the former general oversaw as “unimaginable savagery.”

Mladi? died while serving a life sentence at the UN Detention Unit in The Hague, his lawyer Dragan Iveti? told CNN.

His lawyers filed a request for an early release on humanitarian grounds last week, quoting the detention unit’s doctors as saying that his “overall condition has rapidly declined” and warning that his death “may occur at any time.” The request was denied.

‘Scenes from hell’

Mladi? was born on March 12, 1942, in the municipality of Kalinovik in what was then Yugoslavia. Born at the height of World War II, his early life was deeply affected by the conflict – his father Nedja Mladi? was killed by the Ustasha regime, a Croatian fascist movement which was installed by the Nazis and Fascist Italy in occupied Yugoslavia, and which perpetrated genocide against Jews, Serbs and Roma.

Ratko Mladi? trained at the military academy of the Yugoslav People’s Army in Belgrade. He graduated in 1965, joined the Communist Party and became a career soldier.

After the breakup of Yugoslavia, Mladi? became the Commander of the General Staff of the Army of the breakaway Serb Republic in Bosnia, which was backed and armed by the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.

As the army chief, Mladi? was the main architect of a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing, directly overseeing widespread and indiscriminate killing, deportations and forcible transfers of civilians.

While Mladi? was found guilty of a number of atrocities, two of his crimes have become synonymous with the terror he inflicted on the Muslim and Croat population of Bosnia during the war: the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre.

Under his command, Bosnian Serb forces besieged the city of Sarajevo from higher ground in 1992. They trapped its residents in the valley below for two years, conducting frequent shelling and sniper attacks against the civilian population. More than 10,000 people, including many children, died during the siege.

In July 1995, Mladi? spearheaded an attack on the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, which was designated a “safe place” by the UN. The massacre remains Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II: More than 7,000 Muslims, mostly men and boys were slaughtered within a few days.

Riad described the events that took place in Srebrenica as “truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.”

“Thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of men buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers’ eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson,” the judge said as Mladic’s indictment was announced.

(Source: BBC)