Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb top official who was sentenced by a UN tribunal to life in prison for genocide and other crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, will serve his sentence in the United Kingdom.

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) confirmed on Wednesday the decision was passed considering the agreement between the UN and the UK government on the enforcement of sentences of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) from March 2004.

Karadzic will remain in the IRMCT’s custody while awaiting his transfer to the UK.

The former President of wartime Republika Srpska (RS), now a Serb-dominated semi-autonomous entity within Bosnia, was initially sentenced on March 24, 2016, to 40 years in prison by the now-closed ICTY.

He was convicted of various crimes against humanity, including the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks and Croats, the siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica genocide and taking the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) hostages during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Both Karadzic and the prosecution appealed the 2016 judgement but in March 2019 the IMRTC, the ICTY’s legal successor, increased the sentence to life imprisonment.