Bosnian Serb warlord Ratko Mladic dies in prison at 84 (2026-08-28)

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander convicted of orchestrating some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II, has died at the age of 84. UN officials confirmed that Mladic passed away in the prison hospital at the UN detention centre in The Hague, Netherlands.

Mladic was serving a life sentence handed down in 2017 by the UN tribunal for war crimes committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The conviction was widely seen as a landmark moment for victims seeking justice for the brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing that marked the conflict.

His forces were responsible for the prolonged siege of Sarajevo, subjecting the city to relentless shelling and sniper fire, and for the massacre of thousands of men and boys in Srebrenica — the worst mass killing on European soil since the Holocaust.

A family member, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the news and said Mladic's son, Darko, was travelling to The Hague. Mladic had been in UN custody since his arrest in 2011, following years spent evading international justice.