Serbia announces full state honors for dead war criminal Ratko Mladić

Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujić confirmed on Thursday that Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb army commander convicted of genocide and other war crimes, will be buried with the highest state honors.

Speaking to Banja Luka’s Alternative Television (ATV), Vujić said: “General Mladić is a general and the protocols are known. What belongs to General Mladić will certainly be respected.”

He stressed that the family will decide the burial location, noting that Republika Srpska has no role in that decision.

Mladić died earlier on Thursday, at the age of 84 while hospitalized in the United Nations Detention Unit in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence.

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals confirmed his death and said Dutch authorities had begun standard procedures and investigations under national law.

Mechanism President Judge Graciela Gatti Santana ordered a full inquiry into the circumstances, assigning Judge Iain Bonomy to lead it.

No specific cause of death was immediately released, though Mladić had been in declining health, including after strokes, and was receiving palliative care.

Vujić added that Serbia stands ready to retrieve the body without delay.

“If they told us to come tomorrow morning, we would be in The Hague to take the body,” he stated.

The minister said authorities are awaiting a timeline and procedural details from the Mechanism. Family members, including Mladić’s son Darko, were en route to the Netherlands.

Mladić commanded the Main Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska from 1992 during the Bosnian War.

In 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia convicted him of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed, as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the siege of Sarajevo.

The life sentence was upheld on appeal in 2021. He had been a fugitive for nearly 16 years before his arrest in Serbia in 2011.

Reactions across the region reflected deep divisions.
Former Serbian official Aleksandar Vulin declared that Serbia “owes” Mladić a state and military funeral plus a day of mourning, saying: “From Gavrilo Princip to Ratko Mladić, the best Serbs are killed while bound.”

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik called the death a “murder” and said Mladić “was respected by Serbian people. As a commander he stood to defend Serbs.”

In contrast, Emir Suljagić, head of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, stated: “Ratko Mladić is dead, and there’s not much to say about it. The fact [that he’s dead] does not change much. It doesn’t bring back the dead. It doesn’t erase the mass graves. It doesn’t alter the verdicts.”

Victim associations and officials in Bosnia and Croatia condemned any glorification.

One survivor, Kada Hotić, whose son and husband were killed in 1995, said she was grateful the tribunal had not released him: “He died in disgrace, because he killed so many people.”

The planned state honors for a man internationally convicted of genocide have drawn sharp criticism from rights groups and neighboring countries, highlighting unresolved wounds from the 1990s wars that left more than 100,000 dead.