The body of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army commander convicted of genocide, arrived in Belgrade on Thursday, receiving military honors despite his controversial past. Mladic died last week at 84 in a UN detention facility, where he was serving a life sentence for war crimes.
A Serbian government plane brought Mladic's casket, draped in the national flag, from The Hague, Netherlands. Earlier that day, his remains were handed over to his family at Rotterdam The Hague Airport. By Thursday afternoon, the plane touched down in Belgrade.
Six soldiers carried the coffin from the aircraft, accompanied by Mladic’s son, Darko Mladic, and Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujic. Vujic mentioned that the family would soon announce funeral plans.
Pro-government media reported that a military commemoration would take place on Saturday, followed by a funeral on Monday. Authorities expect “tens of thousands” to attend the service, according to predictions by Serbia’s police and state security agency.
Despite his 2017 conviction by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, many Serbs still regard Mladic as a national hero. Thousands have participated in vigils and marches in his honor, drawing criticism in a region still dealing with ethnic tensions over 30 years after the Yugoslav wars.
The Bosnian War broke out when Bosnia’s Serbs seized large swathes of the country to form their own state. The conflict resulted in over 100,000 deaths and displaced more than 1 million people until a United States-brokered peace deal ended it in 1995.
Mladic played a central role in the war, infamous for the Srebrenica massacre, which is recognized as Europe’s first genocide since World War II. In Srebrenica, Serb forces captured the town, forced Bosniak men and boys to strip, murdered them, and buried their bodies in mass graves.
The tribunal in The Hague expressed solidarity with the victims and survivors, condemning any glorification of war criminals.
The tribunal said it stood “in solidarity with the victims, survivors and their families who suffered the crimes for which Mr Mladic was found guilty”. It condemned “any actions that glorify those convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by international courts”.
Serbia, which backed Bosnian Serbs during the conflict, argues that the West and the Hague tribunal unfairly target only Serbs for wartime atrocities, leaving its own victims without justice.
While Serbia formally seeks European Union membership, it remains defiant about its conduct in the war. The EU’s enlargement commissioner warned that “the glorification of war criminals has no place in an EU member country nor in a candidate country.”
