Serbia plans state honours for Ratko Mladić as his death reopens Balkan wounds

Serbia plans to bury Ratko Mladić with the highest state honours if his family chooses Serbia as his final resting place, Justice Minister Nenad Vujić has said, triggering sharp reactions across the region over the treatment of a man convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Vujić said the Serbian authorities were ready to travel to The Hague immediately to take custody of Mladić’s body once the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals completes the necessary procedures.

“General Mladić is a general and the protocols are known,” Vujić told the Banja Luka-based Alternative Television. “His role is also known, but everything that belongs to General Mladić will certainly be respected.”

He added that the location of the burial would ultimately be decided by Mladić’s family.

Mladić died on 27 August while hospitalised in The Hague, where he had been serving a life sentence. The International Residual Mechanism said Dutch authorities had launched the standard procedures and investigations required under Dutch law, while the president of the Mechanism, Judge Graciela Gatti Santana, ordered a full inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said that if Mladić’s family wanted him buried in Serbia, the state would organise everything “in a decent and dignified manner”.

Vučić also accused the Hague-based tribunal of wanting Mladić to die behind bars, saying the Mechanism had refused to allow him to spend his final days in Serbia.

“We have now seen that The Hague wanted Mladić to die behind bars. They did not want to allow the general to die in Serbia, to die where he wanted,” Vučić said.

The Serbian president also accused international justice of applying double standards to crimes committed during the wars that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The prospect of a state burial for Mladić has drawn particularly strong criticism from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Foreign Minister Elmedin Konaković said Serbia itself was choosing to associate its state and military legacy with a man convicted of genocide. “When a person finally convicted of genocide and the gravest crimes is called ‘our general’, and the state sends him off with the highest state and military honours, then it consciously accepts him as part of its state and military heritage,” Konaković said.

“No one is imposing Mladić on Serbia as a hero, nor attributing his crimes to it,” he added. “Serbia itself is choosing him.”

According to Konaković, Serbia cannot simultaneously reject any suggestion of collective responsibility for the crimes committed during the Bosnian war while publicly honouring a man convicted of genocide.

Criticism also came from within Serbia. The European Movement in Serbia called on the government to abandon plans to bury Mladić with the highest state honours, describing such a move as an “unacceptable institutional glorification” of a man finally convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The organisation said that granting state honours to Mladić would insult the victims of the Srebrenica genocide, their families, the citizens of besieged Sarajevo and other victims of the crimes for which he was convicted. It also warned that such a decision would damage relations with neighbouring countries and undermine Serbia’s European path.

“There is no credible European path for a state that institutionally celebrates a person convicted of genocide,” the organisation said, arguing that glorification would not help Serbian society confront its past or promote reconciliation.

The European Movement also raised questions over the legal basis for honouring Mladić as a general, pointing to provisions of Serbia’s Law on the Army under which professional military personnel and reservists can lose their rank and the rights associated with it after receiving an unconditional prison sentence of more than one year.

The announcement also came as public displays of support for Mladić were held in Serbia and Bosnia’s Republika Srpska entity.

Torchlight gatherings were organised on Branko Bridge in Belgrade and Varadin Bridge in Novi Sad. In Novi Sad, a small group displayed a photograph of Mladić carrying the message: “Our freedom lives through your struggle.”

In Banja Luka, a memorial service was held in the main Orthodox church following confirmation of his death. Milorad Dodik, the former president of Republika Srpska, attended and described Mladić as a “great figure” for the Serbian people, saying that people could not be prevented from remembering him.

Republika Srpska Prime Minister Savo Minić also attended the service and said Mladić was “a kind of hero” to him.

The gatherings have renewed concerns about the glorification of convicted war criminals in the region. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s legislation criminalises the public approval, denial or justification of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as the glorification of people convicted of such crimes.

Mladić was the commander of the Main Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska between 1992 and 1996. He was arrested in Serbia in May 2011 and transferred to The Hague shortly afterwards.

In 2017, he was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. His convictions and sentence were upheld on appeal in 2021.

He was found guilty, among other crimes, of genocide for the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, when more than 8,000 Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, were killed by Bosnian Serb forces after the enclave was captured.

The Srebrenica Memorial Centre lists at least 8,372 victims. Many bodies were buried in mass graves and later moved to secondary and tertiary sites in attempts to conceal the scale of the crime, leaving the remains of individual victims scattered over large areas and complicating identification.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice formally classified the crimes committed in Srebrenica as genocide. Mladić and Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadžić were both sentenced to life imprisonment.

More than 50 people have been convicted by international and domestic courts for their involvement in the genocide and other crimes in the Srebrenica area, receiving sentences totalling around 700 years in prison, in addition to several life sentences.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed solidarity with the victims, survivors and families affected by the crimes for which Mladić was convicted.

Albanian Foreign Minister Ferit Hoxha also stressed that Mladić’s death could not alter the historical record.

“Death does not erase guilt and cannot rewrite the historical record,” Hoxha said, adding that the victims of Srebrenica, Sarajevo, Kosovo and the wider Yugoslav wars deserved neither oblivion nor revisionism.

War criminal Ratko Mladić is dead. The wars of the 1990s have yet to truly end

Sources: EUalive’s partner BETA, n1info.rs, BGNES, BTA

Caption: People walk past a graffiti depicting General Ratko Mladic in Belgrade, Serbia, 27 August 2026. Former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic who was convicted of war crimes by the ICTY in 2017 died on 27 August 2026 at the age of 84. EPA/ANDREJ CUKIC