‘Butcher of Bosnia’ is sentenced to life in prison

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A U.N. tribunal convicted Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb former general, on Wednesday of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity in the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims during the breakup of Yugoslavia. He was sentenced to life in prison.

From 1992 to 1995, the tribunal found, Mladic, 75, was the chief military organizer of the campaign to drive Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs off their lands to cleave a new homogeneous statelet for Bosnian Serbs.

Along with Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader convicted on similar charges last year, Mladic was found to have orchestrated a campaign of ethnic cleansing that made Bosnia and Herzegovina, a nation of 4.5 million at the time, the site of some of the worst atrocities of Europe’s bloody 20th century.

The deadliest year of the campaign was 1992, when 45,000 people died, often in their homes, on the streets or in a string of concentration camps. Others perished in the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, where snipers and shelling terrorized residents for more than three years, and in the mass executions of 8,000 Muslim men and boys after Mladic’s forces overran the U.N.-protected enclave of Srebrenica.

Survivors called Mladic the Butcher of Bosnia. His defense lawyers argued that Mladic was largely following orders from politicians above him, and that any atrocities committed by his subordinates and militias were not done at his direction.

Prosecutors asked for a life sentence for Mladic. The presiding judge, Alphons Orie, agreed, saying that his crimes “rank among the most heinous known to humankind.” Mladic’s lawyers said they would appeal.

The verdict reverberated throughout the court building in The Hague — where dozens of survivors of the bloodshed, many of them widows or refugees, filled the public gallery, while others watched from monitors set up by the tribunal or followed it online — and across Europe. In Sarajevo, people watched in cafes and public areas, but there was little overt celebration.

The U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, welcomed Mladic’s conviction as “a momentous victory for justice.”

“Mladic is the epitome of evil,” al-Hussein said in a statement.