The Appeals Chamber “completely rejected Mladic’s appeal…completely rejected the prosecution’s appeal…confirmed the Trial Chamber’s sentence of life imprisonment for Mladic,” the written summary of the appeal judgement stated.

The 25-year trial of the Ad Hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ended and the tribunal convicted 90 people. The International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is one of the predecessors of the International Criminal Court. The International Criminal Court is the world’s first permanent war crimes court and is also located in The Hague.

Mladic was called the “Bosnian Butcher” because he undertook a 43-month siege of the capital Sarajevo and presided over the 1995 massacre of as many as 8,000 Muslims in a “safe zone” designated by the United Nations. It was the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.

The Srebrenica massacre was the terrible climax of a war that lasted for 3-1/2 years. In this war, the nationalist Bosnian Serb army led by Mladic used artillery, tanks, mortars and mortars every day. A heavy machine gun attacked Sarajevo, killing 10,000 people.

In July 1995, the dead in Srebrenica were pushed into mass graves within four days. Some of them were dug up and relocated to remote mountainous areas to hide evidence of the killing.

The goal set by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is “ethnic cleansing”-forcibly expelling Bosnian Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbians, and clearing Bosnian land for Greater Serbia.

“I don’t recognize this court”

In a judgment upheld by the appeal judge on Tuesday, the court found that Mladic and the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic constituted a criminal conspiracy. .

“I don’t recognize this court,” Mladic said at a hearing in The Hague in 2018. When he was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in 2017, he shouted: “These are all lies, you are all liars!”

Watch | Mladi?’s reaction to the verdict in 2017:

Karadzic was also convicted of genocide in 2016, and Mladic has been at the top of the ICTY wanted list for many years after the Western powers ended the war in 1995. Mladi? lived safely in Belgrade, but in 2000 a popular uprising overthrew Milosevic.

Milosevic died in custody on March 11, 2006, just a few months before the verdict of his own four-year court trial. Karadzic is serving his sentence in a British prison.

“For me, Mladic is a symbol of all the terrible crimes that occurred during the war-our girls were raped, boys were killed, just because they were Muslims. The Germans have Hitler, and the Serbs have Mladic. “Munila Subasi? said his son and husband were killed by the Bosnian Serb army that occupied Srebrenica.

“I looked at him in court and he was proud of what he did. I didn’t see the regret on his face.”

The army created by Mladic to fight the secession of Bosnia from Yugoslavia led by Serbia in 1992 is a model of ruthlessness and brutality.

Some prisoners suffocated in the heat after being forced to eat salt and refuse water. Others starved and raped in the prison camp. After being driven out of the detention facility with poison gas, hundreds of people were forced to jump off the bridge at night and were shot.

Mladic asked a photographer to film his blitzkrieg in the enclave surrounded by Srebrenica and showed him the abuse of the Dutch UN peacekeepers. They mistakenly accepted his solemn promise that the residents were in He is safe in his hands.

“We gave this town as a gift to the Serbs,” he said to the camera, claiming that the victory was revenge against the Muslim Turks, who once regarded the area as part of the Ottoman Empire.

The next day, Mladic’s troops were photographed distributing candies to the children to ensure their safe passage. At the same time, thousands of men and boys were preparing to be executed.

When NATO tried to control his forces with the threat of airstrikes in 1995, his forces provocatively used United Nations peacekeepers as human shields, locking them to possible targets.

Mladic chooses to command the Bosnian Serb army

When Yugoslavia began to split in 1991, Mladic was an officer of the old communist Federal Army of Yugoslavia (JNA).

When the Bosnian Serbs rose to oppose the secession led by Bosnian Muslims in 1992, Mladic was chosen to command a new Bosnian Serb army that quickly occupied 70% of the country.

The town is surrounded by heavy weapons that once belonged to JNA. 22,000 soldiers of the United Nations Protection Force were ordered not to choose a side station, and the village was burned down.

Some of his supporters say that after his daughter Anna committed suicide with Mladic’s trophy gun in 1994, Mladic became more ruthless.

The combination of Western pressure, American secret weapons and training of Bosnian Muslims and Croats gradually reversed the trend against the Mladic army. NATO’s precision strikes did the rest.

However, many nationalist Serbs still consider him a hero because he reduced the casualties around them and tried to unite their people in one country.

The current Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said: “Ratko Mladic is still a legend of the Serb people. He puts his professional and human talents to serve the freedom of the Serb people. “

In June 2019, Mladic’s lawyer stated that his client suffered from deteriorating brain function and cardiovascular disease after a heart attack in 2013. “The risk of a new stroke and a new heart attack is great,” Blanco Lukic said.

The 2,500-page war crimes verdict stated that when he was found guilty of the siege of Sarajevo and Srebrenica, Mladic’s actions were “very important to committing crimes, and without them, these crimes would not It will be implemented as it is now”.