Ratko Mladic, the convicted former Bosnian Serb military chief who died on Thursday in The Hague at the age of 83, will receive a state funeral with full honors, according to Serbia’s Minister of Justice, Nenad Vujić. In statements to the Bosnian Serb channel ATV, the minister said that preparations will follow the protocol corresponding to Mladic’s military rank, convicted of war crimes and genocide, but considered by many in Serbia as a hero.
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“General Mladic was a general and the protocols are known. His role is also known, but everything pertaining to General Mladic will, without a doubt, be respected,” Vujić assured. The minister added that Belgrade is awaiting the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals to establish the schedule for the procedures to repatriate the body, and assured that Serbian authorities are prepared to act immediately once they receive authorization.
More than 20,000 deaths
Mladic was the general during the Srebrenica genocide and the siege of Sarajevo, where thousands of civilians died
“We hope the Mechanism will provide us with a schedule for the procedures and the steps we must follow. If they told us to go tomorrow morning, we would be ready: we would go to The Hague and take charge of General Mladic’s body,” Vujić stated.
Meanwhile, the Serbian press speculates that Mladic could be buried in the Topcider cemetery in Belgrade, alongside his deceased daughter Ana, apparently according to his own wishes. In any case, the minister qualified that “the family will decide the place where he will be buried.”
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Mladic commanded the Bosnian Serb units during the Bosnia-Herzegovina war in the 1990s, following the disintegration of Yugoslavia. In 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia convicted him of crimes against humanity and other war crimes.
Among the most infamous episodes of the war he led are the Srebrenica genocide, where about 8,000 Bosnian Muslims died, and the siege of Sarajevo, in which around 12,000 people lost their lives, about 85% of whom were civilians. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and an appeals chamber confirmed the sentence in 2021.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Croatia, the Ministry of Veterans highlighted last night that Mladic was “one of the main responsible for the brutal war crimes, killings of civilians, and persecutions committed in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
