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The Prosecutor v. Ratko Mladić case before the ICTY concerns the events which occurred from October 1991 to November 1995 in the former Republic of Yugoslavia. The conflicts in the former Republic of Yugoslavia have been estimated to be the cause of a death toll of approximately 100,000 people, leading to over 2,000,000 people being displaced. The present case was tried before the ICTY’s Trial Chamber I, and the victims of the crimes were the ethnic groups of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats residing in the targeted municipalities, U.N personnel, and residents of Sarajevo.  

At the time when these events occurred, Mr. Mladić was a Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) Main Staff in the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), including Srebrenica. In his leadership position, Mr. Mladić took control of municipalities in the so-called Serbian Republic of BiH, mainly in the Northwestern and Eastern regions of BiH. In these municipalities, the Bosnian Serb Forces participated in a campaign of persecution to drive the non-Serb populations from these territories, aiming to create an ethnically pure Bosnian Serb State by territorially dividing BiH. 

Mr. Mladić was initially charged together with Mr. Karadžić; however, the judgement in the case of Mr. Mladić was delivered a year later than that of Mr. Karadžić. Mr. Mladić was indicted for 11 charges, 10 of which he was found guilty of, including several charges of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, and one charge of genocide. The Chamber sentenced Mr. Mladić to life imprisonment.

The Assembly of the Serbian People in Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaimed the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in January 1992. Shortly afterwards, a strategic plan was created with the aim to remove the non-Serb population from the newly proclaimed Bosnian Serb state. To this extent, the local police, the newly created army and Serb paramilitary groups engaged in a campaign of attacks resulting in the commission of crimes against the non-Serb population. During this time, Brđanin was the President of the Autonomous Region of Krajina (ARK) Crisis Staff, which functioned as a center for cooperation between the Serb forces committing the crimes.

Trial Chamber II held that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the crime of genocide was committed in the territory of the ARK. Therefore, Brđanin could not be found guilty on such charges.

However, the ARK Crisis Staff's decision to disarm the non-Serbs was found to have assisted and substantially contributed to the commission of the crime of torture, which led Trial Chamber II to find Brđanin guilty of aiding and abetting torture both as a crime against humanity and as a grave breach of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Trial Chamber II furthermore found Brđanin guilty of other crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was sentenced to 32 years' imprisonment.

The accused M.H. was a Croatian Serb who backed up the occupation of the village of Branjina (eastern Croatia) by the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) as part of paramilitary forces. As a member of the Territorial Defense (TO) in the village, he had absolute authority. The District Court of Osijek found him to be guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes and sentenced him to five years of imprisonment in accordance with article 119 of the Basic Criminal Law of the Republic of Croatia.