EP rapporteur for Serbia: Serbian officials attending Mladic’s funeral would signal identification with his crimes

Picula said what he described as “toxic attacks” on the Hague Tribunal’s verdict against Mladic confirmed what he called the already well-known position of the authorities in Belgrade that the former Bosnian Serb military commander was an “innocent victim of the international criminal justice system”.

“The EU’s response must be adequate because the consequences of the Greater Serbian aggression against Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo in the 1990s have still not been addressed,” Picula wrote on X.

He said the participation of Serbian government representatives in Mladic’s funeral was “not insignificant”, as it would demonstrate the degree to which the authorities in Belgrade identify with the crimes for which he was convicted.

Ratko Mladic, the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), died on August 27.

Mladic was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide in Srebrenica, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted Mladic in 2017. In 2021, the Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals upheld his life sentence.

He was convicted of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed, as well as persecution, extermination, murder, deportation and forcible transfer. He was also convicted of crimes related to the siege of Sarajevo and the taking of UN personnel hostage.

Mladic had been in international custody since 2011, when he was arrested in Serbia after nearly 16 years on the run.