Ratko Mladic filed the request to be released on health grounds last month, saying he only had a few months to live.

A United Nations war crimes court has denied a request from Ratko Mladic, an infamous Bosnian Serb military leader during the 1992 to 1995 Yugoslav wars, who oversaw the Srebrenica massacre, to be released early to Serbia on health grounds.

Judge Graciela Gatti Santana at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, the court tasked with handling remaining cases from the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said on Tuesday that Mladic’s condition did not meet the threshold of an “acute terminal illness” required for early release.

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Mladic, known as the “Butcher of Bosnia”, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 over genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He had filed a request to be freed on June 3, 2025, saying he only had a few months to live.

“I acknowledge that Mladic’s current condition, which requires dependency on others for activities of daily living, is precarious,” Santana said in a 12-page decision issued in The Hague on Tuesday.

“Nonetheless, Mladic continues to receive very comprehensive and compassionate care, as amply supported by medical reports.

“The information before me demonstrates that the compelling humanitarian circumstances invoked by Mladic as a basis for his release are not substantiated.”

Mladic, 83, was sentenced by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for his role in terrorising the civilian population during the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces in July that year.

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