Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic convicted of Srebrenica genocide, war crimes

Radovan Karadzic, the Serbs' leader in Bosnia during the 1990s civil war, has been found responsible for genocide in Srebrenica as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes, a U.N. war crimes tribunal announced Thursday. He will be sentenced to 40 years in prison, RT News reports.

In all, Karadzic has been indicted for two counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity, and four counts of violations of the laws of war as president of Republika Srpska.

The International Criminal Court Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia did not, however, find evidence of Serbian forces' "genocidal intent" during the war in Bosnia, CNN reports.

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Karadzic, 70, who has been nicknamed the "Butcher of Bosnia," faced 11 counts of war crimes. He was allegedly behind the siege of Sarajevo, which left 11,000 dead, as well as the Srebrenica massacre, which took the lives of nearly 8,000 Muslim boys and men and was the worst mass killing in Europe since the Holocaust.

Karadzic went into hiding in 1996, only to be discovered 12 years later heavily disguised in Belgrade, assuming a false identity as a "healer." He was extradited to the Hague and pleaded not guilty. His trial, which came to an end in 2014, lasted 500 days, and included evidence from 586 witnesses.