The funeral of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic has been held in Serbia’s capital with state honours, and attended by thousands. The former Bosnian Serb commander was found guilty of genocide against Bosniak Muslims in the 1990s. He died serving a life sentence at the ICC in The Hague.
Published On 7 Sep 20267 Sep 2026
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Tina Peters, who served prison time for tampering with voting machines on behalf of the MAGA movement, has declined a job offer helping to oversee elections in a conservative Northern California county.
“She declined the offer because she’s running around the country right now trying to secure the elections,” Clint Curtis, the Shasta County registrar of voters, said in an interview Tuesday. “Shasta County lost out.”
Last month, Curtis set off alarm bells across California by telling reporters he planned to hire Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was released early from prison this summer amid a pressure campaign by President Trump.
Curtis, himself a longtime election denier, told The Times he had planned to hire Peters as a consultant “to assist with supervision of the November election.”
Peters’ attorney, Peter Ticktin, said in an interview Tuesday that she had given serious consideration to the job offer but that he had not discussed it with her in recent days. It would “not have been a full-time position,” because she is so busy, he said.
“There’s far more for her to do than get tied up in one county,” Ticktin said. “At this point, she is an American icon. I mean, think about it: How many people meet with the president of the United States in the Oval Office?”
In California, talk of hiring Peters drew swift condemnation from Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic lawmakers who vowed to fight her employment.
The public observation area installed at the Shasta County elections office in Redding by Clint Curtis, the registrar of voters.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
On Monday, Newsom wrote in a sarcastic post on X: “A convicted MAGA election tamperer working in an elections office. What could possibly go wrong?”
He added, in all caps: “TINA, NOT IN CALIFORNIA! ELECTION DENIER FELONS NOT WELCOME HERE!!!”
In a separate social media post, the governor’s press office called the job offer “a disgrace” and said Newsom had directed corrections officials to “make every effort” to reject transfer of her parole supervision into the state.
Peters is not supposed to leave Colorado without permission from her parole officer, although she did visit Trump at the White House.
Curtis called the governor “crazy” and said he was amused that Newsom — who has advocated for prison reform and rehabilitation for criminals — was focused on Peters’ felony conviction.
“California is kind of a second-chance state,” Curtis said. “Except for Tina Peters. No second chance for her in Shasta County.”
Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, Colo., was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to nine years behind bars for breaching her county’s voting machines as part of a scheme to show that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, a claim that has been repeatedly debunked in court.
She was found guilty of helping an associate of MAGA conspiracy theorist and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell gain unauthorized access to Mesa County’s Dominion election equipment in 2021 and make copies of its hard drive before and after a software upgrade.
After months of haranguing from Trump, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, commuted Peters’ sentence. She was released in June after serving less than a quarter of the nine years.
In interviews with right-wing media, Curtis said Peters essentially would do the job of assistant registrar but would be brought on as a consultant to get around the county’s slow hiring process.
Brent Turner, the Shasta County assistant registrar, said his job was not open because he had not quit. He told The Times on Tuesday that he was happy Peters had declined his boss’ offer.
Shasta County Registrar Clint Curtis stands in the election counting area on Feb. 25 in Redding.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“I’m glad that Gavin is paying attention,” said Turner, a Democrat from San Francisco and a longtime election reform activist who has pushed for non-proprietary open-source voting systems with software code that can be examined by anyone.
Curtis handpicked Turner as his assistant last year.
Last month, Curtis told the hosts of “Jefferson State of Mine,” a radio show by leaders of the State of Jefferson secession movement, that Turner “got sick on me” and that he was hoping his assistant would “just, like, retire on June 2 and go away and let me fill [the position], but he didn’t.”
Turner, who is on medical leave, said he had not given Curtis permission to speak publicly about his health and that he had not spoken to his boss since Curtis began talking about hiring Peters.
“It’s been aggravating and unfortunate,” Turner said. “But we’re undaunted, as election officials and workers. And the fact is, there’s work to be done now, so the sooner we put this behind us, the better.”
Curtis was appointed by the Shasta County Board of Supervisors last year after two previous registrars resigned. He will be out of office in January after losing the June primary to Joanna Francescut, a longtime assistant registrar whom he had fired.
Curtis has sequestered primary ballots in a room in the elections office in Redding, sealing the doors with locks and duct tape and telling reporters that the ballots did not look, feel or smell right.
Both Curtis and county officials — who have condemned his actions — have asked the FBI and other authorities to investigate.
Ratko Mladic, a war criminal convicted over the first genocide on European soil since the second world war, has died prison in The Hague at the age of 84.
Earlier this year, Serbia requested that Mladic be allowed to receive medical treatment outside prison, saying his health condition was “serious” and that he “required serious medical treatment”.
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The United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals said that Mladic was receiving adequate medical care while in detention.
Known as the “Butcher of Bosnia”, Mladic was one of the best-known and most notorious military commanders of the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia.
International courts convicted him of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was sentenced to life in prison
The most notorious part of his criminal legacy is linked to the genocide in Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, near the border with Serbia.
Bosnian Serb forces under Mladic’s command seized Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the UN declaring the municipality a “safe area”. After the enclave fell, more than 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys were killed by Mladic’s forces in the days that followed.
Some of the civilians were captured and executed at locations in and around Srebrenica. Others were killed after attempting to flee through the forests towards territory controlled by the army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The bodies of victims were later discovered in numerous mass graves, while many were identified years after the war. The remains of around 1,000 victims are still being sought. International courts established that the killings constituted genocide.
Srebrenica has remained a symbol of one of the gravest crimes committed in Europe since the second world war.
Mladic was born in the village of Bozanovici near Kalinovik, about 40km (25 miles) south of Sarajevo.
He began his military career in the Yugoslav People’s army and gradually rose through the military’s command structure.
When Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in the spring of 1992, following Slovenia and Croatia, Bosnian Serbs established their own political and military structures and proclaimed Republika Srpska, which controlled territory covering roughly half of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time.
In May 1992, Mladic was appointed commander of the Republika Srpska’s army. Over the next three and a half years, he sought to seize parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina controlled by the army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the capital Sarajevo, devastating areas in his path. However, his forces failed to achieve major territorial gains in several key areas.
The political and military leadership of Republika Srpska sought to separate Serb-controlled territories from Bosnia and Herzegovina and create a separate, territorially contiguous Serb state within the country. Republika Srpska would formally become one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s two entities under the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement.
Mladic’s forces were involved in a large number of atrocities across Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In addition to the Srebrenica genocide, international courts found Mladic responsible for a campaign of terror against Sarajevo’s civilian population, the hostage-taking of UN peacekeepers and other crimes.
Sarajevo was surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces for almost 44 months. From positions on the surrounding hills, they shelled the city and used snipers against its residents.
More than 11,500 people from all ethnic groups were killed, while many others were wounded or displaced.
The Sarajevo Siege, which Mladic directed, became one of the defining episodes of the Bosnian war and one of the longest sieges of a capital city in modern history.
After the war ended in 1995, Mladic evaded arrest and spent almost 16 years in hiding. He became one of Europe’s most wanted fugitives accused of war crimes.
He was arrested in Serbia in May 2011 in the village of Lazarevo, near Zrenjanin, at the home of a relative. Several days later, he was transferred to The Hague, where his trial began before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
His arrest was one of the key conditions set by the international community for Serbia’s progress towards closer relations with the European Union. Belgrade faced political and financial pressure from Western countries to cooperate with the tribunal and transfer Mladic to The Hague.
In 2017, the tribunal sentenced him to life imprisonment. The courts established his individual criminal responsibility for a number of crimes.
Although his convictions were final, Mladic continues to have support among sections of the Serbian public and political circles in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In Banja Luka, Belgrade and other areas with predominantly Serb populations, murals depicting him can still be seen. Some members of the public continue to portray him as a military hero rather than a convicted war criminal.
That attitude towards Mladic is part of a broader problem of confronting the legacy of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While international courts have established facts concerning the genocide and other crimes, political and social divisions over the country’s wartime past remain deeply entrenched.
Denial of the Srebrenica genocide and the glorification of convicted war criminals remain serious problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to data from the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, 149 cases of public denial of the Srebrenica genocide were recorded during the first quarter of 2026, including statements by public figures. That represents an increase compared with 2025, when 99 such cases were recorded.
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in May 2024 establishing July 11 as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica.
The resolution was intended to preserve the memory of the victims and promote a culture of remembrance, while also reaffirming the importance of confronting genocide denial and preventing the recurrence of such crimes.