Biljana Plavsic, former president of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia, has died at the age of 96

Nicknamed the "Iron Lady" of the Balkans, she was released from prison in 2009 and has remained away from politics ever since

The former president of the Republic of Bosnian Serbs (Srpska), Biljana Plavsic, convicted of war crimes, has died in Belgrade at the age of 96. This was announced by the Bosnian Serb public broadcaster RTRS. “His passing reminds us once again of that period of struggle, sacrifices and great challenges along the path that led to the creation of Republika Srpska,” the former president of the Republic of Bosnian Serbs, Milorad Dodik, declared on X.

Sentenced to 11 years in 2003, jailed in 2009

Plavsic will be buried in Banja Luka, the capital of the Bosnian Serbs, the RTRS broadcaster specified. Nicknamed "the Iron Lady" of the Balkans, she was sentenced in 2003 to eleven years in prison for war crimes. She was released from prison in October 2009. Plavsic had admitted, before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, her leading role in the campaign of persecution against Croats and Bosnian Muslims during the war in Bosnia in the 1990s.

He justified the massacres by calling them a "natural phenomenon"

Plavsic was the highest exponent of the former Yugoslavia to have recognized his responsibility in the atrocities committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. In 2009 she obtained early release from prison after serving two thirds of her sentence in a Swedish prison and returned to live in Belgrade, but remained far from political life. Already an ally of Radovan Karadi, the military leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Plavsic had publicly supported the campaign of persecution against non-Serbs, going so far as to justify the massacres of the latter by calling them a "natural phenomenon" rather than a war crime.