Who is Ratko Mladic? Four key questions answered.

Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic was arrested Thursday in Serbia, more than a decade after a warrant was issued for his arrest for his involvement in the Bosnian war of the 1990s. He was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes in 1995 and the international arrest warrant soon followed.

Jerome Delay/AP/File
This is a 1993 file photo of Bosnian Serb commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, pictured near a United Nations flag at Sarajevo Airport. Serbian President Boris Tadic said on Thursday that Europe's most wanted war crimes fugitive, Ratko Mladic, has been arrested.

What was his role in the Balkan Wars?

When the Bosnian Serb assembly voted to create a military in 1992, Mladic was appointed the commander. He was the second most powerful Bosnian Serb figure after Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader. He was dismissed from his post by Karadzic in 1996. At the time of his arrest, Mladic was the most senior wanted official from the Bosnian wars (Slobodan Milosevic being dead and Karadzic already detained).

Prior to being appointed head of the Bosnian Serb Army, Mladic served as a top military official in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA). He began the four-year Siege of Sarajevo in 1992 while still with the JNA.

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