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Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander who died while serving a life sentence for war crimes, was buried on Monday with military honors and crowds attending as Serbia defied European Union warnings against allowing public homage to the man found guilty of the continent’s first case of genocide since World War II.
Thousands of mourners started arriving early at the small Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Luke in Belgrade to honor Mladic as his body lay in state. Mladic is still viewed as a hero by many Serbs. His military officer’s cap and saber rested on the coffin, which was flanked by men in fatigues.
The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, led the funeral service while Serbian army soldiers carried Mladic’s flag-draped coffin at the cemetery as mourners clapped and a military orchestra played. Pro-government media broadcast the ceremony live.
Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik and the Russian ambassador in Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, were among those present at the funeral.
Mladic died at 84 on August 27 in The Hague, Netherlands, where he was serving a life sentence. He was sentenced in 2017 for orchestrating the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995; the yearslong siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo; and other war crimes, including setting up concentration camps for detained non-Serb civilians and enemy soldiers.
Since Mladic died, his nationalist admirers have held vigils, painted a series of murals in Belgrade with his image and lit flares in his honor. On Sunday evening, soccer fans displayed a huge image of Mladic and chanted his name at a match in Belgrade.