Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladic to be buried with ‘state honours’

Serbia‘s Justice Minister Nenad Vujic said Friday that former Bosnian Serb military leader and convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic “will receive all the military and state honours to which he is entitled”.

Mladic died on Thursday while serving a life sentence in The Hague for war crimes committed during the Bosnian war in the 1990s.

“It is certain that General Mladic will receive all the military and state honours to which he is entitled, as far as the state is concerned,” Vujic told the K1 broadcaster.

Serbian officials await details on when authorities in The Hague will release the body, he said.

“We are ready to leave for The Hague as soon as we learn what the next steps are,” the minister said.

Mladic, who had suffered several strokes in recent months, was serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Bosnian war, including for his role in the Srebrenica massacre – Europe‘s worst act of bloodshed since World War II.

Three decades on, Bosnian town of Srebrenica still haunted by genocide

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His conviction for wartime killings in former Yugoslavia during the chaos that resulted after the fall of communism led the international press to dub him the “Butcher of Bosnia”. 

The 1992-1995 war left around 100,000 people dead and 2.2 million displaced.

Mladic was the military face of a brutal trio, led on the political side by ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic.