Former Bosnian Serb president and war criminal Biljana Plavšić dies at 96

Passing of the former Bosnian Serb leader

Biljana Plavšić, the former president of Republika Srpska and the only woman convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, died in Belgrade at the age of 96 on 1 October 2026. Her death was announced by the public television network of Republika Srpska (RTRS), citing information from her family. Broadcasters confirmed that her funeral will be conducted in Banja Luka, the administrative center of the Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her death occurred approximately one month after the death of Ratko Mladić, the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska who was convicted of genocide and war crimes. Former Bosnian Serb president Milorad Dodik published a tribute following the announcement.

Her death reminds us once again of that period of struggle, sacrifices and great obstacles on the road that led to the creation of Republika Srpska.

Academic background and wartime role

Born in 1930, Plavšić initially established a professional reputation as a doctor of biological sciences and served as a university professor and faculty dean at the University of Sarajevo. In the early 1990s, she transitioned into politics, becoming a prominent figure in the leadership of the newly declared Republika Srpska alongside Radovan Karadžić. During the 1992–1995 Bosnian war, which resulted in roughly 100,000 deaths and displaced 2.2 million people, Western media outlets nicknamed her the Iron Lady of the Balkans. Throughout the conflict, she took uncompromising stances, publicly supporting the persecution of non-Serb populations and stating that ethnic cleansing was a natural phenomenon rather than a war crime. Journalist Tim Judah noted that while later viewed as a moderate, she had frequently opposed Karadžić during the war, considering his positions insufficiently hardline.

Postwar shift and presidency

Following the conclusion of hostilities under the Dayton Agreement, Plavšić endorsed the peace accord, arguing that it successfully secured borders and sovereignty for the entity. In 1996, she broke with nationalist hardliners based in Pale, establishing a cooperation channel with Western governments and the international community. Operating from Banja Luka, she led the political opposition against her former wartime associates and served as president of Republika Srpska from 1996 to 1998. Western officials subsequently engaged with her as a cooperative political figure in the postwar administration. Plavšić eventually withdrew from active political life in 2000 after her political party suffered a defeat in local elections.

Surrender, guilty plea, and sentence

In 2001, Plavšić surrendered voluntarily to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, where prosecutors had indicted her for genocide, persecutions, and war crimes. One year later, she entered into a plea agreement in which prosecutors dropped the genocide charge after she admitted to persecuting Bosnian Muslims and Croats on political, racial, and religious grounds. The admission made her the highest-ranking official from the former Yugoslavia to acknowledge responsibility for wartime atrocities.

I have now been convinced and accept that several thousands of innocent people were victims of an organized and systematic effort to remove Muslims and Croats from the territory Serbs claimed as theirs.

In 2003, the tribunal sentenced her to 11 years in prison, which she served in Sweden. Swedish authorities granted her early release in October 2009 after she completed two-thirds of her term. Following her return to Belgrade, she retracted her confession during an interview with the Swedish magazine Vi, claiming her guilty plea had been a tactical maneuver to dismiss the genocide charges. She spent her remaining years living privately in Belgrade without returning to public life.