Ratko Mladić

The UN war crimes tribunal's final verdict sentencing Ratko Mladic to life imprisonment was the front-page news in many Serbian newspapers on Wednesday morning, accompanied by condemnations of the allegedly "anti-Serb" court in The Hague.

The president of International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, Carmel Agius, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday evening that the verdict in the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic is still on track to be delivered this month.

Ratko Mladic, the military chief known as the "Butcher of Bosnia" for orchestrating genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Balkan nation's 1992-95 war, lost his final legal battle on June 8 when U.N. judges rejected his appeals and affirmed his life sentence.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry said on June 8 that a U.N. court in The Hague's upholding of a life sentence for Ratko Mladic for his part in the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the right call, although it would not reduce the pain of the relatives of the victims.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday confirmed that Ratko Mladic will serve a life sentence for his role in the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.

The Appeals Chamber upheld Ratko Mladic's first-instance verdict in its entirety.
He was sentenced to life in prison for genocide in Srebrenica, crimes against humanity in 15 municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, siege, sniping and terrorizing Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995, and holding members of the UN peacekeeping mission hostage during the NATO bombing.

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As a reminder, by the first-instance verdict of the Hague Tribunal, whose work was inherited by the Mechanism, Mladic was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 2017, after which both the defense and the prosecution appealed the decision.

• Ratko Mladic is appealing against the 2017 verdict sentencing him to life imprisonment for genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats all over the country, terrorising the besieged population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

Prosecutor Serge Brammertz told BIRN in an interview ahead of Ratko Mladic's trial verdict on Tuesday that he believes the crimes by Bosnian Serb forces committed in five Bosnian municipalities in 1992 represented the beginning of a genocide  in the country which culminated in Srebrenica in July 1995.

As he said, he last saw his father in January 2020.