A funeral with military honors was held in Belgrade on Monday for Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army commander who died last month while serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Thousands of people attended the event, which drew statements from European Union officials and civil society groups.
Mladic died on August 27 at the age of 84. His body was transported to Serbia, where it lay in state at St. Luke church in Belgrade before the funeral service. The main religious ceremony was led by Patriarch Porfirije, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Mladic was buried in a coffin draped in the Serbian flag.
Attendees at the funeral included Serbian opposition figures, current and former officials from Republika Srpska, which is one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s two entities, and Russia’s Ambassador to Serbia, Alexandar Botsan-Kharchenko.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic did not attend the ceremony. Mladic’s family had previously thanked the president for his support, and Vucic had backed what he described as a “dignified funeral.” Vucic’s son, Danilo, was reported to be present at the event. Ahead of the funeral, police blocked access to parts of the city where the church and cemetery are located.
The decision to hold a funeral with military honors prompted reactions internationally and within Serbia. European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos canceled an official visit to Belgrade, stating that “the glorification surrounding his death is incompatible with the values on which the EU path is built.” A spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also issued a statement warning against actions that glorify convicted war criminals.
In Serbia, several civil society organizations criticized the state honors, calling the decision an affront to victims of the war. Marko Oljaca, a Belgrade-based sociologist, told Al Jazeera that President Vucic, despite not attending, had “mobilised an entire machinery that mythologises and humanises Mladic while denying and relativising his crimes.”
Mladic was the military commander of the Army of Republika Srpska during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After nearly 16 years as a fugitive, he was arrested in Serbia in May 2011 and extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
The tribunal sentenced him to life in prison, convicting him on counts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The charges related to his command responsibility during the war, including the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995. A United Nations court determined that the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces constituted genocide.
In May 2024, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution to designate July 11 as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica.
