The final verdict means that the 78-year-old Bosnian Serb military leader will be sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre.

The former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic was convicted of plotting genocide and other atrocities during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia. The appeal failed.

The five judges of the United Nations Hague Criminal Tribunal’s International Residual Mechanism’s decision on Tuesday is final and no further appeals can be made.

26 years after the Srebrenica massacre, the decision ended the last Bosnian genocide trial in court.

The decision to maintain the charges means that the 78-year-old will continue to serve his sentence in prison.

Known as the “Bosnian Butcher”, Mladic played an important role in deadly battles including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War.

Srebrenica witnessed the killing of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys, and this remains the only genocide that has occurred on European soil after World War II.

Mladic was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in 2017, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

His lawyer appealed his conviction, saying that the former general could not be held accountable for possible crimes committed by his subordinates.

They demanded acquittal or retrial.

But the prosecutor wants to maintain Mladic’s conviction while maintaining his life imprisonment.

Tuesday’s verdict was handed down by a panel of five judges led by Zambia’s presiding judge Priska Matimba Nyambe.

The widow and mother of the victim appeared in court to hear the verdict.

It was conducted after 25 years of trials in the now-closed International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), where 90 people were convicted.