The only woman convicted by The Hague tribunal for war crimes has died, still a national heroine to some

In Belgrade on Thursday, 1 October 2026, Biljana Plavšić died at the age of 96. She was the former president of Republika Srpska, the Serb-run entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the only woman convicted of crimes against humanity by the Hague tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Plavšić, a doctor of biology, served as vice president of Republika Srpska during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and was a close associate of Radovan Karadžić, whom she succeeded as president of the entity in November 1996. In January 2001, following an agreement with the then chief prosecutor of the Hague tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, she surrendered to the tribunal voluntarily.

She pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity committed between 1992 and 1995, specifically the persecution of the non-Serb population on political, religious and racial grounds. In exchange, the prosecution dropped the remaining seven counts of the indictment, including the charge of genocide. In 2003 she was sentenced to eleven years in prison for taking part in a campaign of persecution of Bosniaks and Croats in 37 Bosnian municipalities. She served her sentence in Sweden, from where she was released early in 2009, after serving two thirds of it.

There was no remorse. In an interview with the Swedish magazine Vi after her release, she withdrew her admission of guilt and shifted responsibility onto Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić. During the war she described the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks and Croats as:

"a natural phenomenon" (translated)

After her release she lived in Belgrade, stayed out of politics, and was divorced and childless. She received a state pension, and despite her final conviction she kept the reputation of a national heroine among part of the public and the political elite. Olivera Simić's book Madam War Criminal, published at the end of 2025 and based on more than a hundred conversations with Plavšić, revealed that her guilty plea in The Hague was merely a tactical move, meant to avoid a genocide charge and a long trial.

Plavšić died a good month after Ratko Mladić died in prison. He was buried in Serbia with military honours. According to the Serbian news agency Tanjug, she too will be buried in Banja Luka.