A United Nations court has increased the sentence to life in prison for convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic, after hearing his appeal of the original sentence.

Karadzic, 73, was in court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday appealing his original sentence of 40 years for organizing mass killings in the Bosnian War, which lasted from 1992 to 1995. He was also appealing his 2016 convictions of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, for ordering the July 1995 mass killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Bosnia’s Srebrenica region.

The court not only upheld his convictions, but lengthened his sentence. The judge said the 2016 court was wrong to limit his sentence to 40 years, given the “sheer scale and systematic cruelty” of the crimes.

The Associated Press reports that at the pronouncement of the sentence, observers in the public gallery broke into applause. The decision was also broadcast at a memorial in Srebrenica, where friends and family of the victims gathered to watch the proceedings.

Another former Bosnian Serb commander, Ratko Mladic, is also waiting for an appeals decision on his convictions for genocide and war crimes.

 
…