Ratko Mladic, commonly known as the "Butcher of Bosnia" for his massive crimes against Bosnian Muslims in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, should be sentenced to life in prison, prosecutors have called on UN judges.
"It would be... an insult to the victims, living and dead, and an affront to justice to impose any sentence other than the most severe available one: a life sentence," Alan Tieger, a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), said on Wednesday.
"The time has come for General Mladic to be held accountable for those crimes against each of his victims and the communities he destroyed," the prosecutor added.
Tieger and other prosecutors have accused Mladic of a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing in the bloody 1992-95 Bosnian conflict, saying the campaign was meant to chase all non-Serbs from Bosnian territory to create a so-called Greater Serbia.
The former Serb commander, who is now 74, has denied 11 charges including two of genocide, as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the conflict.
More than 100,000 people were killed and over 2.2 million others were displaced in the campaign, which earned Mladic the title of "Butcher of Bosnia." He was on the run for 16 years and was captured in 2011, one year before his trial opened.
Tieger brushed aside claims by Mladic’s defense team that the Serbian commander had limited role in the Bosnian conflict.
The prosecutor said that it was Mladic "who was in charge, who called the shots."
Tieger told judges on Monday that Mladic was not merely concerned "that Muslims might create a state, his concern was to have them vanish completely."
The ICTY is expected to issue its final verdict on Mladic at some time in 2017. The court is to hear three days of closing arguments by Mladic's defense team from Friday into the next week.