Convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić, who was the commander-in-chief of the Army of Republika Srpska, died today at the age of 85 in a prison in The Hague, Serbian media announced.
Mladić had been ill for years, and in recent weeks the family and the authorities of Serbia and the BiH entity of the RS persistently tried to move him to Belgrade, where he would spend his last days.
Ratko Mladić, a native of Kalinovik, was finally convicted in June 2021 before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for genocide in Srebrenica, persecution of the civilian population, extermination and murder, deportation and inhumane acts, terrorism and illegal attacks on Sarajevo and taking UN soldiers hostage. The court found him guilty of 10 of the 11 counts of the indictment.
In the world public, due to his crimes, he became known as the “butcher of Bosnia” who is directly responsible for the death of more than 8,000 men and young men in Srebrenica in 1995.
The criminals who were under his command also spoke about the monstrous crimes and actions ordered by Ratko Mladić.
Despite numerous material and non-material evidence of the atrocities committed during the last war, Mladić is still, unfortunately, a hero for many in Serbia and the BiH entity RS.
After the war, the young man hid and ran away from criminal responsibility for 15 years, and was arrested on May 26, 2011 in Serbia, more precisely in the village of Lazarevo near Zrenjanin.
He was arrested by members of the Serbian Security and Information Agency (BIA) and the Service for the Detection of War Crimes, but many are convinced that he lived freely for years because he was under the protection of individuals from Serbian institutions.
From the end of the war until his arrest, the knowledge about Mladic increasingly fueled suspicion of the Serbian authorities’ claim that they were unable to find and arrest him. Over time, he got the impression that he was under the protection of individuals from institutions, and because of that, he was living freely.
That impression was all the greater after the murder of two Guardsmen of the then Army of Serbia and Montenegro – Dragan Jakovljević and Dražen Milovanović on October 5, 2004 in the barracks located in the Topčider neighborhood of Belgrade. Some believe that the murders have not yet been solved because the guards saw the criminal Mladić there. They believe that this is one of the indicators that he was under the protection of individuals from Serbian institutions.
These murders considerably dissuaded those who expected that with the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime, that is, with the election of the government, which presented itself as democratic, the imminent arrest of Mladić would take place. The arrest was awaited for years despite the fact that it was one of the key conditions for Serbia’s membership in the European Union.
It seems that the monetary rewards offered for useful information that would lead to an arrest did not contribute to this either. A few months before the arrest, in October 2010, the Government of Serbia offered 10 million euros for such information.
The videos, which were broadcast in 2009 in the political magazine “60 minutes” on Federal Television (FTV), led many to be even more convinced that the criminal Mladić was really under the protection of the authorities in Serbia. The videos show Mladić casually hanging out, dancing, singing and taking photos among a large number of people. So, the fugitive lived as a free man, Klix.ba writes.
