War criminal Mladic buried as a hero in Serbia

Ratko Mladic has been described as one of history’s worst war criminals. Yet when the former general is buried on Monday, tens of thousands of Serbs are expected to attend, while many in Serbia honor him as a hero.

Mladic was arrested on May 26, 2011, at relatives’ home in a village in northern Serbia. More than 20 masked police officers took part in the operation. He offered no resistance, was taken to Belgrade and extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague five days later. By then, the Balkan wars had ended 16 years earlier.

Mladic is remembered for his role in those wars. Born in 1942 in Bosnia, then part of Croatia, he graduated from Yugoslavia’s military academy in 1965 and joined the Communist Party. In 1991, he was put in charge of suppressing Croatia’s independence movement. He rose quickly during the war and became a commander.

In that position, he committed a long list of war crimes, including the Srebrenica massacre, described as one of Europe’s worst atrocities since the Second World War. More than 8,300 Muslim men and boys were executed over a few days in the summer of 1995, and their bodies were placed in mass graves. Mladic was also found guilty over the prolonged siege of Sarajevo, in which at least 12,000 people died, and over the establishment of detention camps for civilians and prisoners of war.

The tribunal convicted him of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life in prison despite his denials. Judge Alphons Ories called his crimes “among the most abhorrent crimes humanity has witnessed.” Known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” Mladic was driven by the idea of an ethnically Serbian state cleared of Croats and Bosniaks.

Mladic died in a Hague prison after a heart attack. But in his homeland, many reject the view that he was a war criminal. When his body was brought from the Netherlands to Belgrade on Wednesday, it lay in a coffin wrapped in the Serbian flag, while people lined the road from the airport to the military hospital to greet it.

“

Among the most abhorrent crimes humanity has witnessed.