Honors for a War Criminal: Thousands Mourn the Late General Mladić in Serbia

Thousands gathered outside St. Luke’s Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade to bid farewell to Ratko Mladić. The crowds showed that the former Bosnian Serb general is still celebrated as a hero by many Serbian and Bosnian Serb nationalists, despite his conviction as a war criminal.

A long line formed outside the church from the morning. Mladić’s coffin lay inside, guarded in shifts by six uniformed men. Free buses brought mourners to Belgrade from Bosnia and from cities across Serbia. Patriarch Porfirije, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, led the funeral service, after which a huge procession followed the route from the church to the cemetery.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić did not attend the burial. His absence was attributed to a state visit by the president of Uzbekistan. Several ministers reportedly attended instead, including the defense and justice ministers. From Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, President Siniša Karan and his powerful predecessor Milorad Dodik traveled to the funeral.

Mladić died 10 days earlier after a long illness in a prison hospital in The Hague. He was serving a life sentence imposed after his 2017 conviction by the Hague war crimes tribunal for crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. The court found him guilty, among other charges, of the Srebrenica massacre, taking U.N. peacekeepers hostage and the siege of Sarajevo.

His body was flown from The Hague to Serbia on Thursday aboard a government aircraft. His son and Serbia’s justice minister accompanied it. Soldiers received the coffin, wrapped in the national flag, at Belgrade airport before taking it in a convoy to a military hospital for an autopsy. The EU enlargement commissioner canceled a planned visit to Belgrade over the glorification of Mladić, while Vučić sharply rejected the criticism.