Serbia welcomes return of war criminal Mladic’s body with military honours

Ratko Mladic received a life sentence from a UN court for committing atrocities during the ۱۹۹۲-۱۹۹۵ Bosnian War.

The body of former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who died last week while serving a life sentence for war crimes, has returned to Belgrade for burial, where it has been received with military honours.

The casket, draped in the national flag, was carried on Thursday on board a Serbian government plane that departed from The Hague, Netherlands, where the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was located before completing its mandate.

Mladic, who was ⁠convicted in ۲۰۱۷ of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the ۱۹۹۲-۱۹۹۵ war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, died last week in a UN detention facility aged ۸۴. The UN court confirmed in a written statement that his remains had been handed over to his next of kin at Rotterdam The Hague Airport on Thursday afternoon.

The coffin was carried from the plane in Belgrade by six soldiers, accompanied by Mladic’s son, Darko, and Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujic, who said Mladic’s family would announce funeral plans in the coming days.

Pro-government media said a military commemoration will be held on Saturday and the funeral on Monday. Vujic said Serbia’s police and the state security agency predicted that “tens of thousands” of people could attend the service.

Many Serbs consider Mladic a hero despite his conviction by the UN tribunal.

Thousands of Serbs held vigils and marches in his honour, drawing condemnation in a volatile region that remains ethnically divided more than three decades after the wars that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

The Bosnian War broke out when Bosnia’s Serbs took control of large areas of the country to form their own state. Serbia, which backed the Bosnian Serbs during the war, accuses the West and The Hague tribunal of blaming only Serbs for the crimes and bringing no justice for its victims.

Mladic was one of the most notorious figures of the war in Bosnia, which killed more than ۱۰۰,۰۰۰ people and left over ۱ million homeless before it ended in ۱۹۹۵ in a United States-brokered peace agreement.

Its massacre in Srebrenica was Europe’s first acknowledged genocide after World War II. The Bosnian city ended up being overrun by Serbs who forced Bosniak men and boys to strip, killed them and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves.

The tribunal in The Hague 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 is formally seeking European Union entry but remains defiant over its war role. 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.”