Not since the Nazi era had such atrocities taken place in the heart of Europe.
In the streets of Sarajevo, a once-cosmopolitan capital, terrified civilians spent their days dodging snipers' bullets and shellfire, a years-long urban siege that ultimately left 10,000 people dead.
In the supposed U.N. haven of Srebrenica, some 8,000 Muslim men and boys as young as 12 were herded to the slaughter, their bodies tossed into mass graves.
On Wednesday, a U.N. tribunal found former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic _ known as the "Butcher of Bosnia" _ guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity amid the blood-soaked breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Mladic, 74, was sentenced to life in prison as a key figure in a push to create a home for Bosnian Serbs by clearing away non-Serbs during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.
The culmination of this final major prosecution by the United Nations-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia raised hopes among many that the accused architects of present-day atrocities, such as Syria's President Bashar Assad, might also one day face justice.
But Mladic's conviction, more than two decades in the making, also illustrated the many obstacles to bringing war criminals to account. Here is some background about this prosecution and what it might portend for future cases:
