Serb-Bosnian general Ratko Mladic, the executioner of Srebrenica, dies

BarcelonaBosnian Serb general Ratko Mladić, architect of the bloodiest massacres of the Bosnian War, died this Thursday at 83 while serving a life sentence in a United Nations detention center in The Hague, as reported by Serbian media and confirmed by the Serbian government. Known by the nickname "Butcher of Bosnia," he had been convicted of "genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes" by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which held him militarily responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre, two of the most tragic episodes of the 1992-1995 war, in which more than 10,000 and 8,000 civilians died respectively.

Raised in a small village in southern Sarajevo and in a nationalist environment — his father was murdered by a Croatian nationalist faction when he was two years old — he enlisted in the Yugoslav army at just 15 years old. Thanks to his battlefield successes, he rose through the military ranks, and in 1992, when Bosnia declared its independence, he took command of the army in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, where he ordered what would become the longest siege in contemporary history. His troops terrorized the population with bombs and snipers for over four years, during which the city was completely blockaded.

He led the "ethnic cleansing" campaign of Bosnian Serb troops, who invaded 70% of the country at the start of the war. Dozens of villages were razed and burned, while 22,000 UN Protection Force soldiers stood by. The culminating episode was the Srebrenica massacre, during which he assured the blue helmets that he would protect the nearly 10,000 refugees sheltering in that "safe zone," but he ordered all men to be killed.

After the conflict and the fall of his political allies, Mladić went into hiding to avoid being tried in The Hague and, thanks to an extensive network of protection and complicity in Serbia, remained a fugitive for sixteen years. Once arrested in 2011, a trial began that would last over six years due to the large volume of evidence and testimonies and the gravity of the charges. When the judges issued the historic verdict declaring him guilty in 2017, they determined that his crimes "rank among the most atrocious known to humanity."

Distorted legacy

The cruelty of his methods has transcended him. Beyond the crimes on his record, it is explained that Mladić had a cameraman film the bombing of the Srebrenica enclave to boast to his own people, or that he killed the men in an entire camp of thirst by giving them salt and preventing them from drinking water in the height of summer.

Despite being considered the architect of the war crimes that Bosnian Serb troops perpetrated in the 90s, Mladić is still considered a war hero and defender of Greater Serbia by some sectors both in Serbia and in Republika Srpska, the Serb region of Bosnia. Until the last moment, he defended his actions: "I defended my people and only my people can judge me," he declared defiantly the day the International Criminal Tribunal read the sentence condemning him to life imprisonment.