Ratko Mladic (Jerry Lampen/Pool via AP)
Army of Republika Srpska general Ratko Mladic will be buried with the highest state honors, Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujic told Banjaluka's Alternativna TV late on Aug. 27.
"General Mladic is a general and the protocols are known. His role is known, too, but what belongs to general Mladic will certainly be honored. I would like to point out that Republika Srpska is not someone who decides on this, the family will also decide where he will be buried because that is his family's business," Vujic said.
He added that Serbia will handle the transportation of Mladic's body.
Novi Sad-based Regional Academy for Democratic Development said on Aug. 28 that the Serbian justice minister's announcement that convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic will be buried with full state honors is "scandalous and shameful" and proof that "the regime has never given up on the policy of genocide."
European Democratic Party Secretary General and a member of the European Parliament Sandro Gozi has said in a statement that Serbia's decision to bury Ratko Mladic with the highest state honors crosses a line that no country striving for membership in the European Union should ever cross.
Ratko Mladic, the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska, sentenced by the Hague tribunal to life imprisonment for genocide and other war crimes during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, died in the Hague prison hospital on Aug. 27 at the age of 84.
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