Belgrade (AFP) - Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military chief dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia” for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, has died, Serbian state broadcaster RTS reported on Thursday.

Mladic, who had suffered several strokes in recent months, was serving a life sentence in The Hague for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity after overseeing the Srebrenica slaughter, Europe’s worst act of bloodshed since World War II.

Serbian state officials and Mladic’s family had appealed for his release due to his failing health, but those calls were rejected by the Hague tribunal.

He was the military face of a brutal trio, led on the political side by ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, as the former Yugoslavia descended into carnage after the fall of communism.

The 1992-1995 war left around 100,000 people dead and 2.2 million displaced.

The most infamous atrocity was committed in Srebrenica, where Serb forces under Mladic’s command executed 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys who had sought shelter in what was meant to be a UN-protected enclave.

Footage from the time showed him handing out sweets to children before they and the women of Srebrenica were taken away by bus, while the men were marched into a forest and executed.

Their bodies were dumped in mass graves, many of which were dug back up and reburied in order to try to hide the evidence.

The few who escaped told harrowing stories of murder, torture and rape by the Bosnian Serb forces.

In November 1995, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted Mladic, who was dismissed from his post but evaded capture for another 16 years.

At first he led a life of luxury, pampered by the military in Serbia where some to this day see him as a hero.

But the pressure mounted on him after Milosevic fell from power in 2000. Mladic was finally arrested in May 2011 and transferred to The Hague.

- ‘Epitome of evil’ -

Mladic insisted throughout his trial and later appeal process that he was not guilty of genocide or war crimes.

He harangued judges with multiple tirades, describing the court as a “child of western powers” and depicting himself as the “target of the NATO alliance”.

He was convicted in 2017, with the life sentence upheld on appeal in 2021.

Mladic was also found guilty of orchestrating a wider campaign of ethnic cleansing to drive Muslims and Bosnians out of key areas to create a so-called Greater Serbia.

The tribunal said at the time the crimes committed were “amongst the most heinous known to humankind”. Former UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein described him as “the epitome of evil”.

But many Serbs continued to revere a military commander who painted himself as a “simple man” whom fate had chosen to protect his people.

Towards the end of his life, his defence team sought to persuade the court he should be released on humanitarian grounds.

“Given the nature of the terminal and uncurable medical condition of Mr. Mladic and his short-term life expectancy, continued detention serves no legitimate purpose, and approaches inhuman treatment and punishment,” his team argued.

His age has always been a matter of dispute. He claimed to have been born in March 1943 but the tribunal listed his birth year as 1942.