Villain to many, hero to others – Serb nationalists protest against the U.S. and the U.N. war crimes court in Belgrade in December 2006. Their posters show pictures of Karadzic, Mladic and Vojislav Seselj with the Cyrillic writing meaning: "God saves the Serbs" and "Great Serbia."

Ratko Mladic: Villain to many, hero to others – Mladic supporters protest at a rally organized by the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party near parliament in Belgrade in May 2011.

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Ratko Mladic: Villain to many, hero to others9 photos

Ratko Mladic: Villain to many, hero to others – Mladic appears at his war crimes trial on May 16, 2012. He eluded authorities for nearly 16 years until his capture in May 2011.

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Former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic onThe Hague tribunal described what happened there in July 1995 as "truly scenes from hell written on the darkest pages of human history."

Born in Kalnovik, Bosnia-Herzegovina, during the height of World War II, the 70-year-old was a career soldier who served in Yugoslavia's military before that nation dissolved in the early 1990s.

Mladic was shaped by the war when his father was killed by Croat Nazis when he was two years old. In 1965 he graduated from a military academy and joined the Communist Party in Yugoslavia, an ethnic stew of six states -- Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro.

Over the following three decades he rose rapidly through the ranks of the Yugoslav army. By the time he took Bosnia's battlefields he had become a hero to many