Hello and welcome to the details of ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ Ratko Mladic is dead — but where are the other key figures from the Balkan wars? and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander known as the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, was one of the most notorious figures of the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. — AFP pic
PARIS, Aug 28 — AFP looks at what became of the main players in the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, after the death of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military leader who oversaw the 1995 Srebrenica massacre — Europe’s worst single act of bloodshed since World War II.
‘Butcher’ Mladic
Mladic, who died yesterday, was a Bosnian Serb war criminal dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia”.
He was convicted of genocide and war crimes over the nearly-four-year siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo by his forces between 1992 and 1996 and the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica in 1995, among other crimes.
He was arrested in Serbia in 2011 after 16 years on the run and transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 2017.
The verdict against him was confirmed on appeal in 2021.
Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was accused of being the architect of a campaign of ethnic cleansing that saw more than a million non-Serbs driven from their homes in Bosnia alongside widespread killings and rapes.
He evaded capture for 13 years until he was arrested in 2008 on a bus in the Serbian capital Belgrade masquerading as a New Age healer.
In 2016, he was convicted in The Hague over the genocide in Srebrenica and nine other charges including extermination, deportations and hostage-taking. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison, but that was later increased to life in jail.
Yugoslav leader Milosevic
Former Serbian president and ex-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic died in his cell at The Hague in 2006, aged 64, while on trial for 66 counts including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. An official report said he had suffered a heart attack.
He was accused of fuelling ethnic conflict and mass murder in the former Yugoslavia during his 13-year rule.
Ultranationalist Seselj
UN judges in 2018 found ultranationalist Serb politician Vojislav Seselj, arch-propagandist for a “Greater Serbia”, guilty on appeal of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
The court said Seselj instigated the murders of scores of Croats, Muslims and other non-Serbs in incendiary speeches inciting violence against them.
As he had already spent almost 12 years in detention, the leader of the far-right Serbian Radical Party remains free.
Croat general Gotovina
Retired Croatian army general Ante Gotovina, considered a war hero by many Croats, was sentenced to 24 years in jail in 2011 for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Croatia’s 1991-1995 war.
He was acquitted on appeal of the killing of ethnic Serbs in an operation in Croatia’s Krajina region and received a rapturous reception on his return to Zagreb.
Paramilitary leader ‘Arkan’
Zeljko “Arkan” Raznatovic, a Serbian mob boss who headed the feared “Tigers” paramilitary outfit, was indicted in 1997 by a court in The Hague for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Bosnia in 1995.
He was gunned down aged 47 in January 2000 in a Belgrade hotel.
Bosnian Croat commander Praljak
Slobodan Praljak, a former Bosnian Croat military commander, killed himself by drinking cyanide in The Hague in November 2017, just after appeal judges upheld his 20-year jail term for being part of a “joint criminal enterprise” to ethnically cleanse Bosnian Muslims in the war.
Kosovo guerrilla leader Thaci
In April 2023, Kosovo’s former president Hashim Thaci and three other leaders of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) went on trial for war crimes in a Hague tribunal set up to investigate atrocities committed during Kosovo’s independence war from Serbia in 1998-99.
The court has not yet announced its verdict, although the prosecution requested in early 2026 a 45-year prison sentence against him.
He denies the charges, which include murder and torture. — AFP
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