Radovan Karadžić is guilty of crimes against humanity, of genocide against Bosnian Muslims carried out in Srebrenica in 1995, and of the siege of Sarajevo. For these offences, the former president of the Republika Srpska and commander of its armed forces was sentenced to 40 years in prison in a verdict delivered on 24 March by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague, in the Netherlands.

At the outset of the trial, which began in 2009, the prosecution had sought a life sentence. After six years, eleven counts of indictment were upheld, finding the commander responsible for the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica — one of the worst atrocities committed from the Second World War to the present day —, for the siege and shelling of Sarajevo, for persecutions — understood as massacres, rape, torture, looting and ethnic cleansing — targeting non-Serb civilians across 20 different municipalities in Bosnian territory (including a concentration camp), and for taking soldiers of Unprofor, the United Nations Protection Force, hostage.

Before the end of the war, on 25 July 1995, the Tribunal indicted him alongside his military counterpart, Ratko Mladic, for the offences of which he stands convicted today, committed between 1992 and 1995. Karadžić ignored the arrest warrant and remained with his family at his home in Pale for more than a year, despite the five-million-dollar bounty on his head. Following a second arrest warrant, he went into hiding in 1996. He was arrested 12 years later, in 2008, in Belgrade, where he had been living for several years, moving about freely and under a false identity — reportedly thanks to cover provided by the Serbian intelligence services — giving alternative medicine lessons around the country.

Until the end, Karadžić maintained his innocence with regard to the crimes for which he has been convicted, and he now has 30 days to lodge an appeal. Following the verdict, chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz told the British newspaper The Guardian that this ruling serves as a warning to those guilty of mass crimes: "No one can escape justice," the judge said. The verdict was followed at The Hague by more than 500 people, over 150 of whom were representatives of associations for war victims.