UN's Zeid: Mladic verdict carries message for Syria and beyond

GENEVA – The conviction of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic for genocide and crimes against humanity serves as a warning to others such as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations' human rights chief said on Wednesday.

Earlier on Wednesday the UN Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Mladic guilty of the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica and for the siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, in which more than 10,000 civilians were killed by shelling and snipers over 43 months.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, who worked for the United Nations in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, said he had waited a long time for the life sentence handed down against Mladic.

"Mladic is the epitome of evil and the prosecution of Mladic is the epitome of international justice," Zeid said in an interview in his Geneva office.