Mladic's goal was ethnic cleansing - the fields 'overflowed with graves'

The then Bosnian Serb General in 1994. Photo: AFP/Getty

Daria Sito-Sucic

In the 1990s, he was the burly, brash general leading nationalist Bosnian Serbs towards a seemingly sweeping victory in Bosnia's war. Two decades later, he was reduced to an ailing old man trying in vain to delay judgment for genocide in a UN court.

Prosecutors demanded a life sentence for the man who critics called the "Butcher of Bosnia". His lawyers called for his acquittal and release, arguing he never approved mass killings of Muslim or Croat civilians in Bosnia's vicious, neighbourhood war, and was a victim of western anti-Serb bias.