Family: Ratko Mladic to Be Buried in Belgrade on Sept. 7

Darko Mladic (BETAPHOTO/MILAN ILIC)

Ratko Mladic, who died Aug. 27 in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence for genocide and other war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, will be buried at Topcider Cemetery in Belgrade on Sept. 7. A commemoration was held at the Serbian Army Hall on Sept. 5.

Mladic’s son Darko invited citizens at a Sept. 4 news conference "to attend in as large numbers as possible so that we can bid him a dignified and peaceful farewell and not let the burial become a reason for clashes." Darko Mladic said his father's coffin would be at St. Luke Church in Belgrade's Kosutnjak neighborhood on Sept. 7, where citizens will be able to pay their respects, before he is buried next to his daughter at Topcider Cemetery.

Darko Mladic said that he does not deal in politics and that the funeral will be "a people’s funeral," adding that "interest among the people is enormous," not only in Republika Srpska and Serbia but also in the Czech Republic, Greece, Poland, Bulgaria, the United States, Australia and other European countries.

Serbian Minister of Justice Nenad Vujic spoke to reporters at the same gathering about the detailing of appeals by Serbia and the Mladic family to the Hague-based International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals to allow Mladic to receive medical treatment in Serbia, said they had never discussed either his sentence or the verdict, which, he said, "Takes away a person's freedom, but must never take away human dignity." When asked about the attitude of the authorities in Belgrade towards Mladic, who was convicted of genocide, the minister replied that Serbia respects the rulings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and is meeting its obligations, while "the rest is a matter for national law," adding that human dignity is also a European value.