Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was finally found criminally responsible for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Almost two decades after the Bosnian War ended, a UN-backed tribunal on Thursday found Radovan Karadžić, the one-time leader of the short-lived Repulika Srpska, guilty of ten charges of war crimes — including genocide.

Robin Van Lonkhuijsen / AFP / Getty Images

Karadžić was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Eight of those years will be subtracted because of the time he has already spent behind bars in the Hague.

The 70-year old, who is nicknamed the 'Butcher of Bosnia,' was held responsible for the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys by the Bosnian Serb forces under his command.

After the death of longtime leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, and the subsequent collapse of the USSR, Yugoslavia was falling apart in 1991. A multiethnic country, the various ethnic groups that had been held together Tito were clamoring for independence.

The shorter version of what followed: rising nationalism, combined with the fall of Communism as a unifying factor, saw Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina attempting to break away, just as federal government attempted to rein them in. The Serbian government under President Slobodan Milosevic controlled the Yugoslav National Army — originally tasked with ending the secession movements in Croatia and Bosnia — which became more focused on spreading Serbian control.

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This dynamic played out most heavily in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Bosnian Croats and Serbians attempted to form their own enclaves against Bosniak Muslim resistance. The Serbians dubbed their territory the Republika Srpska, led by Karadžić.

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