RATKO MLADIC BURIED WITH MILITARY HONOURS IN BELGRADE

Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander convicted of genocide, was buried on Monday in Belgrade with military honours despite warnings from the European Union against public homage to the war criminal. Thousands of mourners attended the funeral at the Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Luke, where Mladic's flag-draped coffin was flanked by uniformed men and bore his military officer's cap and sabre. Serbian army soldiers carried the coffin at the cemetery as an orchestra played and mourners clapped. Patriarch Porfirije, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, led the service, which was broadcast live by pro-government media.

Mladic died on 27 August aged 84 whilst serving a life sentence in The Hague, where he was held by the International Criminal Court. He was sentenced in 2017 for orchestrating the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, overseeing the years-long siege of Sarajevo, and establishing concentration camps for detained non-Serb civilians and enemy soldiers. The funeral was attended by Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik and Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, the Russian ambassador in Serbia.

The ceremony marked a significant public display of honour for a man found guilty of the continent's first genocide case since World War II. The EU had issued warnings against allowing such public homage, yet Serbian state institutions participated formally in the funeral proceedings. Mladic remains viewed as a hero by many Serbs, despite his international conviction for war crimes committed during the 1990s Bosnian conflict.