THE HAGUE: UN judges on Tuesday upheld the genocide life sentence of former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in the final verdict on Europe's worst act of bloodshed since World War II. US President Joe Biden hailed the "historic" confirmation that the man dubbed the "Butcher of Bosnia" will spend the rest of his life in jail for the atrocities he oversaw during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

The grey-haired Mladic, in his late 70s, briefly closed his eyes and shook his head as the Hague tribunal rejected his appeal against his 2017 conviction and sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The worst of those was Srebrenica, where Serb forces under Mladic's command executed 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys who had sought shelter in what was meant to be a UN protected enclave.

But there was no repeat of Mladic's previous courtroom outbursts as judge Prisca Nyambe announced that the court dismissed his appeal "in its entirety" and "affirms the sentence of life imprisonment".