Mladic’s funeral: 8,000 people pay their respects to the ‘Srebrenica executioner’
State and military honours were paid to the general at the Church of St Luke in Belgrade. In Bosnia, 76,000 complaints have been lodged for glorifying a war criminal
Thousands of people – at least 8,000, according to police figures quoted by pro-government media – gathered in Belgrade for the funeral of Ratko Mladic, the Serbian general convicted of orchestrating the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War, whose return to his homeland – where he was once regarded as a hero – has sparked international alarm. The funeral service was presided over by the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, but was shunned by the country’s leading political figures. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said he was tied up in an urgent meeting with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who is currently visiting Belgrade.
The body of Mladic,, the Bosnian Serb commander convicted of war crimes and who has gone down in history as ‘executioner of Srebrenica”, who died whilst serving a life sentence in The Hague, was first laid in state, whilst Serbia defied the warnings from the European Union against public celebrations in honour of the man found guilty of the first genocide to have taken place in Europe since the Second World War.
Thousands of people arrived early this morning at the small Serbian Orthodox church of St Luke, in Belgrade, to pay their respects to Mladic, who is still regarded as a hero by many Serbs. His officer’s cap and sabre lay on the coffin, flanked by men in military uniform. In front of it lay a row of medals. Outside the church, Serbian flags had been hung nearby, whilst a huge banner unfurled across the road read: ‘Welcome, General; thank you to your mother for giving birth to a hero’. Mladić, “an Orthodox Christian and a Serbian soldier”, “will remain deeply etched in the memory of the majority of the Serbian people”, said Porfirije during his funeral oration. “Beyond the judgements of human courts, the final verdict on his character and his actions rests with time, historical memory and, above all, divine judgement.”
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the glorification of war criminals is a criminal offence, in just seven days as many as 76,000 complaints were lodged, on the basis of which over 930 criminal proceedings were initiated against individuals who publicly glorified the general.
Mladic died aged 84 on 27 August in The Hague, in the Netherlands, whilst serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his troops during the Bosnian War of 1992–95. Although the funeral arrangements were formally handled by Mladic’s family, the Serbian government sent a plane last week to bring the body back to Belgrade, and soldiers carried the coffin draped in the national flag.
