The body of former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic was flown to Belgrade on a government plane. (Photo: REUTERS/Chris Helgren)
The body of former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic,
who died last week in prison in The Hague, was flown to Belgrade on a
government plane, Reuters
reported.
A government plane carrying Mladic’s coffin landed at
Belgrade airport on the evening of Sept. 3. The coffin, draped in the Serbian
flag, was accompanied by Mladic’s son and grandson and Serbian Justice Minister
Nenad Vujic. His body will later be taken to a military hospital for an
autopsy.
An unnamed Serbian minister told Reuters that Mladic would
receive a large-scale state funeral. Serbian media reported that a farewell
ceremony will be held in central Belgrade on Sept. 5 and that Mladic will be
buried next to his daughter at a cemetery.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said he expected “tens of
thousands of people” to attend Mladic’s funeral.
The European Union has already warned Serbia of possible
consequences. EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said glorifying Mladic as a
war criminal runs counter to European values.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said that if Serbia
holds a state funeral for Mladic, it could “close the door” to EU membership.
Serbia has been an official candidate for European Union membership
since 2012, and accession negotiations have been underway since 2014.
Former Bosnian Serb army Gen. Ratko Mladic died on Aug. 27
at the U.N. detention facility in The Hague, where he was serving a life
sentence for genocide and war crimes committed during the 1992–1995 Bosnian
War.
The Hague tribunal sentenced him to life imprisonment in
November 2017, and the court upheld the sentence in 2021. Mladic spent 15 years
behind bars after being arrested in 2011 following years on the run from
justice.
In 1996, Mladic and other leaders of the then-unrecognized
Republika Srpska were charged with war crimes committed during the breakup of
Yugoslavia. The indictment contained 16 counts, including one count of genocide
and three related to crimes against humanity.
Mladic was found responsible for the siege of Sarajevo,
which lasted nearly four years and killed about 10,000 people, as well as the
1995 mass killing of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.
NV reported that the Srebrenica genocide was the largest
mass killing in Europe since World War II and the most tragic episode of the
1992–1995 Bosnian War between Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats.
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