Ratko Mladic buried in Belgrade amid EU condemnation

Convicted Bosnian Serb wartime commander Ratko Mladic was buried in Belgrade on Monday at a funeral attended by thousands, drawing condemnation from the European Union over what it called the glorification of war criminals.

Mladic died in The Hague last month, aged 84, while serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 1990s Bosnian war.

The service was held at St Luka church rather than the larger Saint Sava temple, where state funerals are normally organised. After the service, a procession took Mladic's coffin to Topcider cemetery, where he was buried next to his daughter.

AFP journalists and aerial footage showed thousands of people in the area. Some mourners waved flags bearing Mladic's face, along with Serbian and Republika Srpska flags.

Several Serbian ministers attended, as did Russia's ambassador to Serbia and Milorad Dodik, the former president of Bosnia's Serb entity. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic did not attend and said earlier that the state would ensure the event passed safely.

Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujic had initially announced “military and state honours” for Mladic, prompting international criticism, before Vucic tempered the decision. Vucic rejected accusations that the funeral glorified Mladic and said the service followed the family's wishes.

“Any glorification of war criminals, genocide denial and revisionism contradict the most fundamental European values and have no place in the EU or in EU candidate countries,” an EU spokesman said.

Mladic was convicted by a United Nations war crimes court of genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which Bosnian Serb forces killed around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in a UN-protected safe zone. He was also convicted of persecuting and forcibly expelling Bosnian Muslims and Croats, terrorising civilians during the siege of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage during NATO airstrikes in 1995.