Ratko Mladic Dies in The Hague, Aged 84

Ratko Mladic, commander of the Army of Republika Srpska from its founding in 1992, died on Thursday, August 27, in Scheveningen, aged 84. His family confirmed the death.

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals said Mladic died while awaiting transfer to another country, where he was to serve the remainder of his sentence. Kurir reports that he died at 2.23 p.m. in the United Nations detention unit, while some outlets write that he spent his final days in a hospital in The Hague.

He was born on March 12, 1942. From his arrest more than fifteen years ago he never left detention in The Hague.

The final weeks: palliative care and rejected requests

His health had been deteriorating for months. In detention he survived two strokes and a heart attack, he had diabetes, and in his final months he was immobile and could barely speak. According to media reports, he had been receiving palliative care in the United Nations detention unit since 2024, meaning care aimed at easing suffering rather than at treatment.

On August 13 this year a medical report found that Mladic had entered the final stage of life and that death could be expected within weeks. In mid August his defence team, led by lawyers Branko Lukic and Dragan Ivetic, filed a request for conditional early release on humanitarian grounds.

On August 22 the president of the Mechanism, Graciela Gatti Santana, rejected that request, reasoning that an expected imminent death is not in itself grounds for early release.

Serbia was pressing in parallel. The Justice Ministry asked for a transfer to the Military Medical Academy rather than release to his home, as described by the director of the Judicial Academy, Nenad Vujic. President Aleksandar Vucic wrote to The Hague a week before the death, asking that Mladic be allowed to die in Serbia, and that plea was refused. Vucic said at the time that release for treatment was a question of humanity, not of court judgments.

Timeline: from the indictment to Scheveningen

July 1995. The Hague tribunal issues an indictment and a warrant for Mladic’s arrest.

1995 to 2011. He spent sixteen years as a fugitive. For part of that time he lived under another man’s name, as Milorad Komadic.

May 26, 2011. He was arrested in Lazarevo, near Zrenjanin, in the house of a relative who had been sheltering him.

End of May 2011. He was transferred to the United Nations detention unit in Scheveningen.

May 2012. His trial opened before the Hague tribunal.

November 22, 2017. The first instance judgment: life imprisonment, for genocide in Srebrenica, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. He was acquitted on the count covering genocide in six municipalities.

June 8, 2021. The appeals chamber upheld the judgment and it became final.

August 27, 2026. Death in Scheveningen, aged 84, while the procedure was under way to transfer him to the country where he was to serve the rest of his sentence.

Divided reactions

The news was received across the region much as Mladic himself had divided it for years: as a hero on one side, as a convicted war criminal on the other.

The president of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, Milorad Dodik, described the death as a consequence of the conditions in which Mladic had been held.

This really is murder.

Dodik added that this was a man who had been the commander of the Army of Republika Srpska and who had led that army from its founding.

The opposite assessments came from Sarajevo. The member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegovic, said Mladic would be remembered the way the judgment defined him. The deputy head of the Mothers of Srebrenica association, Kada Hotic, said the court had kept its word and held him in prison to the end.

Condolences came in from Republika Srpska, along with claims by some officials that his death was hastened by the denial of adequate medical treatment.