
Families of the men killed in the Srebrenica massacre have condemned the sentence handed down to former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic as not tough enough and too late.

Warlord Karadzic was found guilty of genocide for the massacre which left 8,000 Muslim men and boys dead by judges at a UN War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague.

The 70-year-old former psychiatrist, still in robust health, has been jailed for 40 years for ordering the 1995 killings, Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War.

Widows of men murdered said even decades behind bars would not give them justice.

Scroll down for video

The moment Radavan Karadzic finds out judges have found him guilty of crimes against humanity in a UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague

The 70-year-old former psychiatrist, still in robust health, has been jailed for 40 years after being found guilty of ordering the Srebrenica massacre

Bida Smajlovic who lost her husband and brother in the atrocity said: ‘He killed so many children and will perhaps live long enough to regain freedom. Where he is is not really a prison. It is warm, he eats, he even looks good. My pain and my loneliness endure and nothing will change that, nothing can reduce my suffering.’

The 63-year-old's husband was one of three brothers who died at Srebrenica.

Earlier today, their wives, including Bida, gathered nervously around a television set to watch war crimes judges sentence Karadzic, who will receive credit for time already spent in detention since 2008.

Thousands of bodies were dumped in mass graves by Bosnian Serb forces in the massacre, in which Muslim women were separated from the men and boys, during the Bosnian War.

Another Smajlovic widow, Sajma, wept as she saw Karadzic on television.

‘As soon as I see him it angers me,’ she said, adding that she had taken tranquillisers to cope with the pain of the sentencing.

Karadzic was found guilty of 10 charges relating to Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, including genocide for the Srebrenica slaughter.

‘There is no adequate sentence for him, he will perhaps live long enough to be freed and has already lived for a long time, unlike my Ismet,’ said the third woman, Vasva Smajlovic, 73.

‘The best sentence would be to kill him on the spot, for the world to see him decompose. The fact I have lived to see him condemned brings me some comfort.’

Bida Smajlovic prays near the memorial plaque with names of killed in Srebrenica massacre before watching the trial in The Hague

Sadik Selimovic, a survivor of July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica prays by his relatives' grave at a memorial center in Potocari

Victims pictures are displayed on a table as people watch the International Criminal Tribunal sentence war lord Radovan Karadzic

As he sat down after hearing his sentence, Karadzic slumped slightly in his chair, but showed little emotion. He plans to appeal the convictions.

He was also found guilty of crimes against humanity in several municipalities of Bosnia as well as murder and persecution.

Judges also convicted him of deportation, unlawful attacks, inhumane treatment, taking hostages, extermination and found criminally responsible for a campaign of sniping and shelling in the siege of Sarajevo.

Giving its verdict, presiding judge O-Gon Kwon said the campaign in which the city of Serbs, Muslims and Croats was shelled and sniped at by besieging Bosnian Serb forces, could not have happened without Karadzic's support.

He also said Karadzic and his military commander, General Ratko Mladic, intended 'that every able-bodied Bosnian Muslim male from Srebrenica be killed.'

However, he has been acquitted of another count genocide in connection with the municipalities.

Peter Robinson, part of Karadzic's legal team, said he would appeal, describing his client as disappointed as he had insisted he was innocent and says his wartime actions were intended to protect Serbs.

He told reporters: 'He's astonished. He feels the trial chamber took inference instead of evidence in reaching the conclusions that it did.'

Karadzic, left, in 1995, when he ordered the Srebrenica massacre which saw 8,000 people killed and right in 2008, when he was captured posing as a spiritual leader after 13 years on the run

Butcher: Karadzic (right) and his general Ratko Mladic are seen on Mountain Vlasic in this April 1995 file photo. The pair were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in a conflict that tore Yugoslavia apart

FROM NATIONALIST TO GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES: HOW RADOVAN KARADZIC WAS SENTENCED TO 40 YEAR IN JAIL June 19, 1945: Born in Savnik, Yugoslavia, in what is now the Republic of Montenegro. July 12, 1990: A founding member of the Serbian Democratic Party in Bosnia-Herzegovina. March 27, 1992: Becomes president of Serbia's National Security Council. April 6, 1992: Bosnia is recognized as an independent state by the United Nations. May 12, 1992: Elected president of the three-person presidency of the Serbian republic in Bosnia. December 17, 1992 - July 19, 1996: Serves as sole president of Serb Republic in Bosnia. He is also supreme commander of the armed forces. July 1, 1991 - November 30, 1995: According to his UN indictment, Karadzic participates in war crimes in order to gain control of parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina that have been proclaimed part of the Serb Republic, using terror tactics and a campaign of persecution and deportations. April 1, 1992 - November 30, 1995: Bosnian Serb forces engaged in a 44-month siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. July 11 - 18, 1995: Bosnian Serb forces killed thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica. 1996: Karadzic vanishes from public eye. 2003: Bosnia's top international official freezes bank accounts and other assets of Karadzic's close relatives who are suspected of helping him hide. July 2005: Karadzic's wife makes public appeal for him to surrender 'for the sake of your family.' He publishes a book of poetry in Serbia, titled 'Under The Left Breast Of The Century.' A spokeswoman in The Hague expresses outrage that he is free to do so. July 21, 2008: Karadzic is arrested on a Belgrade bus while posing as New Age healer Dr. Dragan Dabic and disguised by a thick beard and shaggy hair. July 30, 2008: Karadzic is flown to International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia's detention block. July 31, 2008: A clean-shaven Karadzic makes first appearance in tribunal courtroom. Refuses to enter pleas to charges. October 26, 2009: Karadzic trial starts, but he boycotts the hearing. October 7, 2014: Final day of trial. Judges begin lengthy deliberations. March 24, 2016: Judges find him guilty of war crimes and genocide in the Srebrenica massacre Advertisement

But UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hailed the conviction of Karadzic for genocide as a 'historic day for international criminal justice.'

In a statement, he said: 'This judgment sends a strong signal to all who are in positions of responsibility that they will be held accountable for their actions and shows that fugitives cannot outrun the international community's collective resolve to make sure they face justice according to the law.'

While UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein hailed the verdict as 'hugely significant'.

He explained: '"It... strips away the pretence that what he did was anything more than political manipulation, and exposes him for what he really was: the architect of destruction and murder on a massive scale.'

Param-Preet Singh, senior international justice counsel at Human Rights Watch said in a statement:'Victims and their families have waited for over two decades to see Karadzic's day of reckoning.

'The Karadzic verdict sends a powerful signal that those who order atrocities cannot simply wait out justice,' Singh said.

Digging up the dead: International War Crimes Tribunal investigators clearing away soil and debris from dozens of Srebrenica victims buried in a mass grave near the village of Pilica

Pictures that shocked the world: Prisoners were kept in horrific conditions while many Bosnian men were slaughtered without mercy

WITNESS ACCOUNTS OF HORRORS CAUSED BY KARADZIC 'They made 20 prisoners dig their own graves before cutting their throats. Two men would kick us in one part of the body and another would use a baton to beat you over the head until you became unconscious,' - Ahmet Zulic, held at Betonirka detention centre in Sanski Most, testifying at Karadzic's trial in 2009. 'I was shot from the left side, but the bullet passed through me and killed the little one. It was against his cheek and it came out of his head,' - Dzezana Sokolovic, who was shot during the siege of Sarajevo in 1994, with the bullet killing her son Nermin. 'The last two that remained were my son and another boy. His hands were tied behind his back. First they killed the guy in front of him and then they shot him once and a second time and then I started screaming' - Nura Alispahić, whose son's murder in Srebrenicva was broadcast on national television. 'When we heard the news that Srebrenica had fallen, that's why we had to leave, because everybody would be killed. Some old people stayed behind and ended up being killed. They could not get away.' - Protected witness 'KDZ039' [Identity protected], who survived Srebrenica massacre in 1995, at the 2009 trial 'A single man survived among thousands' - Protected witness of the Srebrenica massacre, via Prosecutor Julian Nicholls at the 2009 trial 'I don't know exactly, Mr Karadzic, who was killing with what intentions in mind. As far as I could see, some persons really enjoyed torturing others.' - Ex-Bosnian Serb army soldier Drazen Erdemovic who participated in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre Advertisement

Meanwhile in Bosnia, which has remained divided since the war, posters displaying Karadzic's photo and saying 'We are all Radovan' were plastered on walls in several towns in the Serb part of the country.

Dozens of people gathered in a park in the Bosnian Serb town of Doboj to offer support to Karadzic.

In Sarajevo, Amra Misic, 49, said: 'I took a day off to watch the verdict as I was waiting for this for 20 years. I wish him a long life,' she said, referring to the fact that Karadzic is 70 years old and sentenced to 40 years.

Some residents of Belgrade have also criticised his sentence, reflecting widespread mistrust in the UN war crimes tribunal.

Bosko Solic said: 'This is a fascist decision!' adding 'there is no justice and he was convicted for nothing.'

Another retiree, Djordje Katic, says he is 'not surprised' that Karadzic has been convicted by the tribunal.

Katic insists that the court 'could sentence him to as many years (in prison) as they wished. What else can I say?

Karadzic is the highest-ranking person to face reckoning before the UN tribunal in The Hague over the war two decades ago in which 100,000 people died as rival armies carved up Bosnia along ethnic lines that largely survive today.

Among the main charges is that Karadzic, who was arrested in 2008 after 11 years on the run, controlled Serb forces that massacred 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995 after overrunning the supposed UN-designated 'safe area'.

Karadzic once headed the self-styled Bosnian Serb Republic and held the title of supreme commander of its armed forces.

The only more senior official to face justice before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in custody a decade ago before a verdict was reached.

Ratko Mladic, the general who commanded Bosnian Serb forces, was the last suspect to be detained over the Srebrenica slaughter and is also in a UN cell awaiting judgement.

Speaking before the verdict, Munira Subasic, whose son was among the victims of Srebrenica, said: 'I expect justice to win tomorrow and that he (Karadzic) will be sentenced for the killings.

'The verdict is very important to show new generations, especially those in Serbia who have been poisoned with hatred already, what really happened in Bosnia.

The Srebrenica massacre and the Serb siege of Bosnia's capital Sarajevo were events that turned world opinion against the Serbs and prompted NATO air strikes that brought the war to an end.

Karadzic defended himself through his 497-day trial and called 248 witnesses, poring over many of the millions of pages of evidence with the help of a court-appointed legal adviser.

Prosecutors say he conspired to purge Bosnia of its non-Serb population. Rejecting the charges, Karadzic sought to portray himself as the Serbs' champion, blaming some of the sieges and shelling on Bosnian Muslims themselves.

But opponents of the ICTY argue that its prosecutors have disproportionately targeted Serbs, with 94 out of 161 suspects charged from the Serbian side, while 29 were Croat and nine Bosnian Muslim.

Prosecutors have also been criticized for not bringing charges over the atrocity-ridden war against two other leaders of that era who have since died - Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic.

Female survivors of the Srebrenica massacre gather around a TV to watch a live broadcast of Radovan Karadzic being found guilty of genocide

Habiba Masic, Fatima Mujic, Vasvija Kadic and Mirsada Kahriman listen to the verdict as they watch a TV broadcast of the sentencing of Radovan Karadzic

'If you had got prosecutions of those three (including Milosevic) then you'd get a really good picture of the way the violence was produced but we're not getting it,' said Eric Gordy, an expert on the court at University College London.

The ICTY, set up in 1991 at the outset of federal Yugoslavia's violent break-up that killed 130,000 people through the 1990s, was meant to deter future war crimes and promote reconciliation - but its judgments remain divisive.

This week, the government of Croatia - an ex-Yugoslav republic now in the European Union - asked the ICTY to revise a ruling that named Tudjman, the country's founding president, as an accessory to a plan to commit ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

Relatives of the victim of the Srebrenica massacre stage a protest ahead of the Karadzic trial at The Hague, where he was sentenced to 40 years in prison

A man holds up a magazine cover showing emaciated prisoners in Bosnia while many Bosnian men were slaughtered without mercy

Many Serbs, both in Bosnia and Serbia, regard the court as a pro-Western instrument, maintain that Karadzic is innocent and believe his conviction would inflict grave injustice on all Serbs.

Serge Brammertz, prosecutor at the tribunal, worries that its work, which is winding down, has done little to help heal the war's deep wounds, given that ethnic nationalists continue to dominate power in much of Bosnia.

'I'm not convinced everyone has really understood the wrongdoings from the past,' he said.

'Many people in all the former Yugoslavia are still using a rhetoric that is still closer to what we heard in court than we should expect.'

Psychiatrist, poet and mass murderer: The warlord who spent 13 years on the run and disguised himself as a new age healer

From psychiatrist and poet to leader of the Serbian resistance in Bosnia, Radovan Karadzic ultimately chose a brutal path.

Born in 1945 into a poor family in Savnik, Yugoslavia, Karadzic moved to Sarajevo in 1960 to study medicine.

By 1971 he was practicing psychiatry in the ethnically mixed Bosnian capital, writing poetry and a children's book.

Karadzic, centre wearing sunglasses, pictured with his private army. With nationalism on the rise, Karadzic shifted his focus to politics, forming the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) that led to his election to parliament

In 1985, he was tried for embezzlement of public property while building a family house and served 11 months in jail.

But by 1990, with nationalism on the rise, Karadzic shifted his focus to politics, forming the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) that led to his election to parliament in the first democratic elections after the fall of communism the same year.

As the Yugoslav republics were breaking away one by one, first Slovenia, then Croatia, Karadzic warned non-Serbs in Bosnia not to declare independence from Serb dominated Yugoslavia, telling them clearly what would happen if they did.

'Do not think that you will not lead Bosnia and Herzegovina into hell, and do not think that you will not perhaps lead the Muslim people into annihilation because the Muslims cannot defend themselves if there is war,' he said in October 1991.

Karadzic, who saw himself as a historic figure who would unify all Serbs in a common country, led the Serb resistance to the majority vote for Bosnia's independence in 1992 and declared himself the leader of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bosnian Serbs armed and backed by the Yugoslav Army conquered some 70 per cent of the country, laying siege to its capital and killing and expelling non-Serbs from the territory they controlled.

The conflict took over 100,000 lives and forced over two million people from their homes.

Karadzic appears in the steps of the Serb headquarters after talks in Pale near the then besieged city of Sarajevo in April 1993

On July 11, 1995, Serb troops overran the Muslim enclave. Some 15,000 men tried to flee through the woods toward government-held territory while others joined the town's women and children in seeking refuge at the base of the Dutch UN troops.

The outnumbered Dutch troops could only watch as Serb soldiers rounded up about 2,000 men and later hunted down and killed another 6,000 men in the woods. The bloodshed marks Europe's worst massacre since the Holocaust.

So far, remains of some 7,000 victims have been excavated and identified through DNA technology but the bodies of more than 1,000 more victims have yet to be found.

Karadzic was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in 1995, one of the 11 counts relates to genocide in Srebrenica.

He went into hiding and evaded arrest for 13 years before he was caught in Belgrade, Serbia, in 2008, where he hid masked as a New Age healer.

Karadzic lived under the guise of Dr Dragan Dabic, and identity he had stolen from Bosnian Serb who died during the war in Sarajevo in 1993.

THE MEN WHO HAVE BEEN CALLED TO ACCOUNT AT THE HAGUE FOR WAR CRIMES OVER THE DECADES Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb military leader who is accused of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, was extradited to The Hague in 2011. His trial is ongoing. Slobodan Milošević was the first European head of state to be prosecuted for genocide and war crimes. After being defeated as president in Yugoslavia’s elections in 2000 he was charged with war crimes including genocide and crimes against humanity in connection to the wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. He conducted his own defence in the trial, which ended without a verdict when he died in his prison cell in The Hague in 2006. Milošević, who suffered from heart problems, died of a heart attack. Milan Milutinovic, served as president of Serbia from 1997 to 2002. After his presidential term finished he surrendered to The Hague where he was tried for war crimes. He was found not guilty on all charges in 2009. Milan Martić was a senior rebel commander of Serbian forces in Yugoslavia during the Croatian War of Independence. He was convicted of war crimes by The Hague in 2007 and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Momčilo Krajišnik, the former Bosnian Serb leader, was convicted of persecution, deportation, and forced population transfer during the 1992–95 Bosnian War. In 2006 he was found guilty of committing crimes against humanity during the Bosnian War and was sentenced to 27 years’ imprisonment. He was granted early release in 2013. Advertisement

Bosnian Serb Stojan Zupljanin (left) and Radovan Karadzic speak in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka. Karadzic was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in 1995, one of the 11 counts relates to genocide in Srebrenica massacre

As Dr Dabic, he practiced alternative medicine and ran his own website where he advertised his expertise in 'human quantum energy'.

Over the years, he made himself unrecognizable growing a thick beard and long, grey hair, and became known to the locals as 'Santa'.

While Karadzic's wife Ljiljana remained in their family house in the former Serbian stronghold of Pale, east of Sarajevo, he had a girlfriend called Mila, who worked with him in his 'alternative medicine business'.

Karadzic lived in an apartment in a grim suburb called New Belgrade, and often frequented a local bar called The Madhouse, where he would drink underneath a portrait of himself.

The bar was popular among Serbian nationalists, and Karadzic would come in several times a week for wine, kebabs and sliwowitz [plum brandy].

After having a few drinks, he would reportedly often grab a gusle - a single-stringed musical instrument - and sing to fellow guests.

Despite the fact that the walls were adorned with his own portrait, neither the landlord nor the regulars recognised the 'Butcher of the Balkans' - or so they claimed after his arrest.

While he hid as Dr Dabic in New Belgrade, Karadzic remained one of the world's most wanted men, and international special forces, including Delta Force, the SAS and Seal Team 6 (who would capture and kill Osama bin Laden).

In his book about the hunt for Karadzic, The Butcher’s Trail, Julian Borger tells of a botched Delta Force operation which involved a soldier dressed in a gorilla suit - flown in from the U.S. for the mission.

The plan was to lie in wait for Karadzic's convoy in the hopes that a man in a gorilla suit jumping out on a Serbian mountain road would come as such a shock to Karadzic's men that they would slow down - allowing for the U.S. forces to open fire and arrest him.

However, the scheme never came to fruition as Karadzic and his convoy never materialized, Borger writes in the book.

Karadzic was finally caught in 2008, after 11 years on the run, while traveling from one Belgrade suburb to another.

He defended himself during his trial, which started in 2009, denying the crimes and claiming he was a 'man of peace.'