Thousands gathered in Belgrade to pay tribute to Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb military commander who died last month while serving a life sentence in The Hague. Convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and persecution, Mladić is still regarded as a hero by some Serbs.
The government insisted the funeral was a private affair, even as government ministers attended and state-controlled news media lavished praise on the convicted war criminal.
‘Butcher of Bosnia’
Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian-Serb general who orchestrated the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo during the Balkan wars, has died aged 84. CNN's Nic Robertson reports.
Ratko Mladic, the notorious Bosnian Serb general, has died at 84 while serving a life sentence for war crimes
Ratko Mladic, infamous for his role in the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, has died at 83.
PULSE POINTS WHAT HAPPENED: Ratko Mladic, the former Yugoslav army and Bosnian Serb paramilitary commander known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” has died in a United Nations (UN) prison hospital in The Hague at the age of 83. He was serving a life sentence, principally for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian War, in which up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed. The son of a communist partisan fighter and a career member of the League of Communists, Mladic previously denied being a Serbian nationalist, despite leading Serb forces against Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Croat forces during the war, stating in 1991, “I serve the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with my brother officers, in order to…Open
A general during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, he was convicted in the killing of some 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica, Europe’s deadliest massacre since World War II.