Ratko Mladić’s funeral will be publicly funded, Serbia’s Justice Minister announced on Friday, 28 August 2026. The former Bosnian Serb military leader — widely known as the ‘butcher of Srebrenica’ — died on Thursday, 27 August 2026, in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence imposed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Mladić had been convicted of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, most notably for orchestrating the 1995 Srebrenica massacre — the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II. Over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically executed by Bosnian Serb forces under his command after seeking refuge in what was supposed to be a UN-protected enclave.
According to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, Mladić will receive full military and state honours. ‘It is certain that General Mladić will be accorded all the military and state distinctions he is entitled to,’ Vučić stated. Serbian officials are now awaiting formal notification from Dutch authorities in The Hague regarding the repatriation of his remains. ‘We are ready to travel to The Hague as soon as we learn the next steps,’ the Justice Minister said.
Mladić’s death came just days after the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals — the successor body to the ICTY — rejected a final appeal by his family and the Serbian government to transfer him to a military hospital in Belgrade for medical treatment. He had been seriously ill for several months prior to his death.
He was part of a notorious triad of leaders — alongside former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević and former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadžić — whose actions helped plunge the former Yugoslavia into violent ethnic conflict following the collapse of communism. The 1992–1995 Bosnian War claimed approximately 100,000 lives and displaced over 2.2 million people across the region.