Sir Geoffrey Nice: Ratko Mladic's death takes vital historical answers to the grave

"The important point, perhaps, about Mladic is that he may have taken to his grave some important pieces of information, memory record, that the people of Bosnia and the Bosnian Muslims in particular deserve to hear," Nice said. "And the most important, perhaps one of the most important things that he will have taken with him to the grave is how and why, in the period leading up to the 11th of July 1995, he knew that he could do what he did to Srebrenica and later to the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica without fear of intervention by Western powers," Nice said.

“We know that there was an agreement between America, France and the United Kingdom that air power would not be used to save Srebrenica and that that agreement was kept secret from the Dutch as well as from the Bosnian Muslims themselves for some six weeks. But that doesn't explain, finally, how Mladic knew that he could do what he did. And it's, to that extent, a pity that the opportunity for him to fill that gap of knowledge may have been lost,” he added.

Mladic was sentenced by the International Court in The Hague to life imprisonment for the Srebrenica genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws and customs of war during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since the pronouncement of the verdict, he had been serving his sentence within the detention unit in The Hague.