Former Bosnian Serb strongman Radovan Karadzic had his sentence raised to life on Wednesday for war crimes during Bosnia’s 1990s war.
The bloody conflict between Bosnia’s Serbs and its Muslims and Croats was part of a series of wars in the Balkans that erupted in the wake of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia after the fall of communism.
Here is a rundown of the fate of some of the key players in the Balkan wars, which also involved Croatia, Kosovo and Serbia and claimed more than 100,000 lives.
– Appeals underway –
– Karadzic: The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found him guilty in 2016 of genocide and nine other charges including extermination, deportations and hostage-taking.
His appeal hearing opened in April 2018.
The genocide conviction arose from the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia in which almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered.
Karadzic, now 73, evaded capture for 13 years until he was arrested in 2008 on a Belgrade bus, wearing a bushy beard and masquerading as a New Age healer.
– Ratko Mladic: A former Bosnian Serb military leader dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia, he was arrested in 2011 after 16 years on the run.
Mladic, now aged 77, was convicted for genocide and war crimes, including over the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre, and sentenced to life imprisonment in November 2017.
He appealed in March 2018 and the case is still to be resolved.
– Jailed –
– Biljana Plavsic: Former president of the Serbs’ self-declared Republika Srpska and the only woman to be convicted by the ICTY, she pleaded guilty to war crimes and was sentenced to 11 years in jail in 2003.
Now 88, she was granted early release in 2009.
– Vojislav Seselj: UN judges in 2018 found the radical Serb parliamentarian, 64, guilty on appeal of crimes against humanity, sentencing him to 10 years.
As he had already spent almost 12 years in detention in The Hague between 2003 to 2014, he remained at liberty.
An ally of Serbia’s former president Slobodan Milosevic, the court found Seselj was behind the murder of Croats, Muslims and other non-Serbs, as well as mass forced deportations.
– Acquitted –
– Ante Gotovina: The retired Croatian army general, considered a war hero by many Croats, was initially sentenced to 24 years in jail for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Now 63, he was acquitted on appeal in 2012.
– Deceased –
– Milosevic: The former president died in his cell at the ICTY in 2006, aged 64, while on trial for 66 counts including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. An official report said he had suffered a heart attack.
He was accused of fuelling ethnic conflict and mass murder in the former Yugoslavia during his 13-year rule.
– Franjo Tudjman: The Croatian president, whose war of independence from the Yugoslav federation claimed about 20,000 lives, died from cancer in 1999 aged 77.
The ICTY said he would have been indicted for war crimes had he lived.
– Zeljko ‘Arkan’ Raznatovic: The head of the feared Serb ‘Tigers’ paramilitary outfit, he was indicted in 1997 by the Hague court for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Bosnia in 1995.
He was gunned down aged 47 in January 2000 in a Belgrade hotel.
– Slobodan Praljak: A former Bosnian Croat military commander took his own life at age 72 in the full glare of media cameras by drinking cyanide in court in November 2017, just after appeal judges upheld his 20-year jail term.
– Never tried –
– Hashim Thaci: Kosovo’s president since 2016, he was once the political leader of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) that fought for independence from Serbia.
There has been speculation he could face a special Hague-based court that was set up in 2015 to try war crimes allegedly committed by the KLA. The court has yet to announce its first indictment.