The body of former Bosnian military chief Ratko Mladic, who died last week in The Hague, where he was imprisoned, serving time for the genocide of Srebrenica in 1995, arrived today in Belgrade, where he was welcomed with military honors.
© Vlastimir SHONE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
03/09/2026
by
Lusa
Covered with a Serbian flag, the body was transported by six military personnel from a government plane to a vehicle before being transported in court under police escort to a military hospital in Belgrade, national television RTS reported.
During the flight, the body was accompanied by his son, Darko, and Serbian Minister of Justice, Nenad Vujic.
Government media have reported that a public tribute will be held on Monday at a church in Belgrade.
Ratko Mladic was sentenced in 2017 to life sentence by the International Criminal Court for former Yugoslavia, for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war in Bosnia, a verdict confirmed in appeal in 2021. The conflict caused more than 100,000 deaths between 1992 and 1995.
Among the crimes of genocide he was accused of was the Srebrenica massacre, in which his forces killed about 8,000 Bosnian men and adolescents in July 1995.
Mladic died on 27 August at the age of 84 in The Hague, where he served his sentence in a United Nations penitentiary center.
After his death, the Serbian Minister of Justice said that Mladic would receive “all the military and state honors to which he is entitled”.
A few days later, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, said that the glorification of war criminals “is contrary to European fundamental values and has no place in the European Union or in the countries that aspire to be (their) members”.