From the mid-1990s, General Ratko Mladic was one of the world's most wanted war crimes suspects. As leader of the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA), Mladic commanded the forces that fought Bosnians, Muslims, and Croats from 1992 to 1995 in the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, earning a reputation for terror and brutality unequaled in Europe since World War II. Genocide, rape, and torture formed the charges for his war crimes indictments, issued in 1995 by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Easily evading justice, Mladic was accused of more atrocities in Kosovo four years later.

Born on March 12, 1943, in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mladic spent his childhood in the municipality of Kalinovik. A careerist in the military, he advanced through the ranks just as the five decade-old Yugoslavian federation began to disintegrate in the 1990s. In 1991, he was appointed commander of the 9th...