Former Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, has died at the age of 64. Milosevic, who was branded the Butcher of the Balkans, was on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his prison cell bed. He had suffered from chronic heart ailments, as well as high blood pressure, apparently died of natural causes.

Milosevic was accused of 66 counts of war crimes and genocide after orchestrating a decade of bloodshed during the breakup of his country and had been on trial since February 2002. His trial had been interrupted on a number of occasions, due to his ill health and chronic heart condition.

Milosevic managed to turn his country's defeats into his own personal victories. Even though he lost four wars, shattering his nation and impoverishing his people, he held onto power for 13 years. Eventually, he was abandoned by his people and he finally surrendered on April 1, 2001 after a 26-hour standoff.

Milosevic was born in Pozarevac, in central Serbia. Both his parents were teachers - his father had been an Orthodox priest who was defrocked. Eventually, both of his parents committed suicide. He met his future wife, Mirjana Markovic in high school. She was the daughter of a wartime communist partisan hero and the niece of Davorjanka Paunovic, private secretary and mistress of Josip Broz Tito, the communist guerrilla leader who seized power in Yugoslavia at the end of World War II.

Milosevic became president of Serbia in 1989 and in 1991, Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia. Milosevic sent tanks to Slovenian borders, triggering a brief war that ended in Slovenia's secession. The Serbs who were in Croatia, were encouraged by Milosevic, to take up arms. Milosevic sent the Serb-led Yugoslav army to intervene, triggering a conflict that left at least 10,000 people dead and hundreds of Croatian villages and towns devastated before a U.N.-patrolled cease-fire was arranged in January 1992.

Three months later, Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence, as well. Milosevic bankrolled the Bosnian Serb rebellion, triggering an even bigger war that killed an estimated 200,000 people before a U.S.-brokered peace agreement was reached at Dayton, Ohio, in 1995. It was during these wars, that Milosevic earned himself the title, The Butcher of the Balkans.