Serbia welcomes return of war criminal Mladic’s body with military honours

By Al Jazeera Staff, AP and Reuters. Published On 3 Sep 20263 Sep 2026.

Key points

• The coffin was carried from the plane in Belgrade by six soldiers, accompanied by Mladic's son, Darko, and Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujic.
• The Bosnian War broke out when Bosnia's Serbs took control of sizeable areas of the country to form their own state.
• Its massacre in Srebrenica was Europe's first acknowledged genocide after World War II.
• The UN court confirmed in a written statement that his remains had been handed over to his next of kin at Rotterdam The Hague Airport on Thursday afternoon.
• The body of former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic.

Notably, the body of former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic. This person died last week while serving a life sentence for war crimes, has returned to Belgrade for burial, where it has been received with military honours.

For context, the casket, draped in the national flag, was carried on Thursday on board a Serbian administration plane that departed from The Hague, Netherlands, where the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was located before completing its mandate.

Mladic, who was ⁠convicted in 2017 of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, died last week in a UN detention facility aged 84. The UN court confirmed in a written statement that his remains had been handed over to his next of kin at Rotterdam The Hague Airport on Thursday afternoon.

In practice, the coffin was carried from the plane in Belgrade by six soldiers, accompanied by Mladic's son, Darko, and Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujic. This person remarked Mladic's family would announce funeral aims over the next few days.

Pro-government media remarked a military commemoration will be held on Saturday and the funeral on Monday. Vujic remarked Serbia's police and the state security agency predicted that "tens of thousands" of residents could attend the service.

Plenty of Serbs consider Mladic a hero despite his conviction by the UN tribunal.

Thousands of Serbs held vigils and marches in his honour, drawing condemnation in a volatile region that remains ethnically divided more than three decades after the wars that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

Notably, the Bosnian War broke out when Bosnia's Serbs took control of sizeable areas of the country to form their own state. Serbia, which backed the Bosnian Serbs during the war, accuses the West and The Hague tribunal of blaming only Serbs for the crimes and bringing no justice for its victims.

Mladic was one of the most notorious figures of the war in Bosnia. It killed more than 100, 000 individuals and left over 1 million homeless before it concluded in 1995 in a United States-brokered peace agreement.

Its massacre in Srebrenica was Europe's first acknowledged genocide after World War II. The Bosnian city concluded up being overrun by Serbs who forced Bosniak men and boys to strip, killed them and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves.

Meanwhile, the tribunal in The Hague remarked it stood "in solidarity with the victims, survivors and their families who suffered the crimes for which Mr Mladic was found guilty".

It condemned "any actions that glorify those convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by international courts".

Serbia is formally seeking European Union entry but remains defiant over its war role. The EU's enlargement commissioner cautioned that "the glorification of war criminals has no place in an EU member country nor in a candidate country."

In short, serbia welcomes return of war criminal Mladic's body with military honours is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.