Body of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic to be flown to Serbia, president says

The body of former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, a convicted war criminal, will be flown to Serbia on Thursday, according to President Aleksandar Vucic. Mladic passed away last week while serving a life sentence for genocide and other atrocities committed during the Bosnian war. The United Nations court in The Hague released Mladic's body after his death in a hospital there, though the court has not yet commented on the matter.

Vucic informed reporters that Mladic's family will announce funeral arrangements soon, predicting that tens of thousands of people, many of whom view Mladic as a hero, may attend his funeral. Serbia's security forces and state security agency anticipate a challenging task in maintaining order, given the expected large number of attendees.

Mladic was convicted in 2017 for orchestrating the massacre of over 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995, as well as the siege of Sarajevo and other war crimes, including the establishment of concentration camps for non-Serb civilians and enemy soldiers. Following Mladic's death, thousands of Serbs paid their respects in vigils and marches, which drew criticism from the region, which is still ethnically divided more than three decades after the war.

Families of Mladic's victims have expressed that his conviction by the UN court provided some justice for the brutal deaths of their loved ones. Serbia, which supported the Bosnian Serbs during the war, is seeking European Union membership but remains defiant about its role in the conflict. Vucic recently accused the West and the UN court of blaming only Serbs for the atrocities while failing to provide justice for the Serb victims.

He also criticized the court for not granting Mladic a humanitarian release to die at home. The Srebrenica massacre, recognized as Europe's first acknowledged genocide after World War II, resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 people when Serbs took control of the Muslim "safe haven" and killed the men and boys, subsequently burying their bodies in mass graves.

Mladic was among the most infamous figures of the Bosnian war, which left more than 100,000 people dead and over 1 million displaced before a U.S.-brokered peace agreement ended it in 1995.