France, Aug. 27 -- Mladic, who had suffered several strokes in recent months, was serving a life sentence in The Hague for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity after overseeing the Srebrenica slaughter, Europe's worst act of bloodshed since World War II.

His conviction for the wartime killings as the former Yugoslavia descended into carnage after the fall of communism led the media to dub him the "Butcher of Bosnia".

The 1992-1995 war left around 100,000 people dead and 2.2 million displaced.

Mladic was the military face of a brutal trio, led on the political side by ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Serbian state officials and Mladic's family had appealed for his re...