HE was Europe's most wanted war criminal, a man loathed by millions for the ruthless, sadistic genocide of the 1990s.

It was his word that sparked the worst mass murder since the Second World War, the slaughter of some 8000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica at 1995, and he personally commanded the legions that ravaged Bosnia during the Balkan War.

For much of the 16 years since his indictment for genocide and war crimes, however, Ratko Mladic lived openly as a free man, enjoying nights out in Belgrade and walking his dog in the local park.

His capture by special forces yesterday will now force the gruesome details of his life under the public spotlight, giving an insight into the mind of one of the most reviled killers of the modern age.

Born in a Bosnian village in 1942, Mladic was introduced early to the horrors of warfare. His father, a guerrilla fighter, was killed before he reached his fourth birthday – allegedly by pro-Nazi Croat forces.

By the end of his teens Mladic had begun military training, but he dwelt heavily on his father’s bloody death. He would later take journalists on a tour of his native village, pointing out houses where he claimed his family members had been killed by pro-Nazi Muslims in the depths of the war .

It was in the 1990s that Mladic rose to become a general in the newly formed Serb army, handing him the power he needed to realise his nascent murderous ambition.

He initially commanded troops in Croatia, seizing around a quarter of the country for the Serbs and showing off the flair for violence that would later seal his fate as one of Europe’s most notorious warlords. The Croat town of Vukovar, on the banks of the Danube, was devastated during the fighting, and became one of the starkest symbols to emerge from that early conflict.

Around this time a senior UN negotiator described him as “a psychopath – highly intelligent and profoundly violent” – an early insight into the unfolding terror of Mladic.

Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader, recognised his general’s talents but also the threat he posed, and pulled him out of the country for reassignment to his native Bosnia.

Though he loved the pomp and circumstance of military life, pretending for himself the status of a British or American commander, Mladic was in reality pitted against thousands of poorly trained and barely armed civilians. He led a sustained bombardment of homes and civil installations, forcing as many as two million Bosnians to flee and killing tens of thousands.

In 1992 his forces controlled nearly three-quarters of the Bosnian region. It was now, through a swift and brutal campaign of genocide that Mladic was to demonstrate the heartless, systematic zeal that earned him ever lasting notoriety. The biggest incident is unrivalled since the 1940s as the worst civilian genocide to occur on European soil.

Though the enclave of Srebrenica was ostensibly under the protection of UN forces, Mladic and his troops successfully captured it in 1995. The new masters showed no mercy, allegedly ordering the massacre of 8000 Muslim boys and men.

It was in the wake of this wholesale slaughter that he was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague for crimes against humanity.

According to the charge sheet he faces, all 15 counts of genocide, murder and hostage-taking, plus extermination and persecution, were part of a planned campaign.

The aim of his operation, it says, was “the elimination or permanent removal, by force or other means of Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat or other non-Serb inhabitants from large areas of Bosnia”.

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