War criminal Ratko Mladicʼs body returned to Serbia on government plane, potentially threatening countryʼs EU accession

The body of former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who died last week in prison in The Hague, has been flown to Belgrade on a government plane.

Reuters writes about this.

A government plane carrying Mladicʼs coffin landed at Belgrade airport on the evening of September 3. The coffin, draped in the Serbian flag, was accompanied by Mladicʼs son and grandson, as well as the countryʼs Justice Minister Nenad Vuic. The body will then be taken to a military hospital, where an autopsy will be performed.

A Serbian minister told Reuters that Mladic would be given a large state funeral. Serbian media reported that a farewell ceremony would be held on Saturday, September 5, in the center of the capital, and that Mladic would be buried next to his daughter in a cemetery on Monday.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said he expected "tens of thousands of people" at Mladicʼs funeral.

The European Union has already warned Serbia of possible consequences. EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Cos said that glorifying Mladic as a war criminal goes against European values.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković was even more harsh: if Serbia organizes a state funeral for Mladić, it could "close the door" to the countryʼs entry into the EU.

The circumstances of Mladicʼs death are currently being investigated by the UN mechanism in The Hague, which handles the remaining cases of the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. This is standard procedure when prisoners die in a UN detention facility. It is not yet known when the results will be made public.

Mladic had been suffering from health problems in recent years and was under the supervision of doctors in the prison hospital before his death.

Who is Ratko Mladic?

Mladić died on 27 August 2026 at the age of 84. He was serving a life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War. At the time, he was the chief of staff of the army of Republika Srpska, a self-proclaimed republic in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In 2017, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found Mladic guilty, among other things, of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which Bosnian Serbs killed some 8 000 Bosnian Muslims. Mladic was also found guilty of crimes during the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, which claimed the lives of some 10 000 people.

Despite this, Mladić remained a popular figure in Serbia and the autonomous Republika Srpska within Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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