22 years after his initial indictment and a trial that lasted five years, Ratko Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, has been sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Our correspondent Mariam Zaidi has more from The Hague, where the trial took place.

Early morning on Wednesday, some of the victims of the man dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia gather outside the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. As they marched with banners, one man held onto the front cover of a Time magazine, taken at the height of the bloody Bosnian war. Behind the razor-sharp barbed wire fences of a Serbian concentration camp stood a man completely malnourished. I asked him who he was. The man replied it is me. Older and more frail, Mladic looked pensive, frequently shaking his head in disagreement as stories of torture, rape and humiliation of Bosnian Croats and Muslims at the hands of the army he commanded during the 1992 to 1995 war, were read out. At one point even causing the hearing to be adjourned as he was removed from the courtroom. But in the end, it all came down to the final sentence.

ALPHONS ORIE, PRESIDING JUDGE UN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL "For having committed these crimes, the chamber sentences Mr. Ratko Mladic to life imprisonment."

Guilty was the verdict on 10 out of the eleven charges Mladic faced, including the genocide of thousands in Srebrenica, and crimes against humanity.

It has been a long road to justice. Mladic was indicted in July 1995 but 16 more years would go by before his arrest. The trial began in the spring of 2012.

SERGE BRAMMERTZ, CHIEF PROSECUTOR UN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL "It's an important achievement, for the office, for international justice, but mainly for the survivors."

But some survivors were disappointed that Mladic was cleared of one count of genocide in communities outside of Srebrenica.

KELIMA DAUTOVIK BOSNIAN WAR SURVIVOR "As me personally I couldn't care less whether he has got a life sentence or walks free. Because he was not charged with his first count and that is genocide. In my town in Prijedor, 3,800 civilians have been killed."

MARIAM ZAIDI THE HAGUE Wednesday's verdict is the last before the UN war crimes tribunal closes its doors on December 31st. So what will be its legacy? Well the Yugoslav court was the first to indict a sitting head of state - Slobodan Milosevic - who died before his trial ended. And this conviction of Ratko Mladic will no doubt bolster court supporters who say its work will remain a beacon inspiring global demands for justice. Mariam Zaidi, CGTN, The Hague.