A UN war crimes tribunal has convicted Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic of genocide and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Mladic, who became known as the “butcher of Bosnia”, was found guilty after a dramatic courtroom climax in which he was ejected over an angry outburst.

The 74-year-old was convicted of 10 out of 11 charges.

He was found guilty of the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 and the siege of Sarajevo, in which more than 10,000 people died.

“The crimes committed rank among the most heinous known to humankind, and include genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity,” Presiding Judge Alphons Orie said in reading out a summary of the judgment.

“Mladic is the epitome of evil, and the prosecution of Mladic is the epitome of what international justice is all about,” UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said.

“Today’s verdict is a warning to the perpetrators of such crimes that they will not escape justice, no matter how powerful they may be nor how long it may take.”