Details announced for Ratko Mladić’s funeral, with body to lie in state at church

A memorial for convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić will be held in Belgrade on Saturday, Sept. 5, while his body is scheduled to lie in state at a church before his burial two days later.

The ceremony will begin at noon at the House of the Serbian Army on Braće Jugovića Street. On Monday, Sept. 7, people will be able to view Mladić’s body at St. Luke’s Church in Vidikovac from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. An Orthodox funeral service will begin at 12:35 p.m., followed by a procession to Topčider Cemetery.

A plane carrying Mladić’s body landed at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport on Thursday. His son Darko, granddaughter Anastasija and Serbia’s justice minister, Nenad Vujić, were aboard. Serbian army personnel met them at the airport alongside Serbian and Republika Srpska flags. The coffin was covered with both flags before a convoy took it to the Military Medical Academy for an autopsy.

Mladić commanded the Army of Republika Srpska during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia convicted him in 2017 and sentenced him to life in prison for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The conviction, confirmed in 2021, included crimes linked to the Srebrenica genocide, the shelling of Sarajevo and the persecution of civilians. Serbian authorities arrested him in May 2011 after almost 16 years in hiding and extradited him to The Hague.