Belgrade bids farewell to General Mladic

Reserve Captain Nenad Jovanovic, a veteran of the Red Berets special forces unit of the Republika Srpska Army, called General Mladic one of the best commanders and said that he was an honest officer.

The coffin with the body of General Mladic was taken to the Church of St. Luke the Apostle and Evangelist in Belgrade, where more than a thousand people gathered to say goodbye to him.

The funeral service for General Mladic was supposed to take place around 12:00 local time, after which his body was planned to be transferred for burial to the Topčiderskoe cemetery.

BELGRADE, September 7 – RIA Novosti. General Mladic was an honest officer and one of the best commanders of the Bosnian Serb army, reserve captain Nenad Jovanovic, a veteran of the Red Berets special forces of the Republika Srpska army, told RIA Novosti.

The coffin with the body of General Mladic was delivered on Monday night to the Church of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke in Belgrade. By the time the church opened at 7.00 (8.00 Moscow time), over a thousand people had already gathered on the streets in front of the church, around which a metal fence had been installed. The first to say goodbye to the general were veterans of various units of the Republika Srpska army wearing T-shirts with the symbols of their units.

“General Ratko Mladic is one of the best generals of the Republika Srpska. I served in the special forces of the RS army, the general was honest and was not a war criminal. He was a commander who would never allow something to be done that was inappropriate for military personnel,” the veteran said.

He noted that General Mladic was convicted of the mass execution of captured Bosniak men in Srebrenica in July 1995, but was not in the city at that time and had no relation to these events.

“My comrades and I came here to pay honor to our commander, the great Serb, patriot, general. He will be our commander in his grave,” the agency’s interlocutor emphasized.

According to the Serbian Orthodox Church, the funeral service will take place around 12.00 (13.00 Moscow time), after which the body is expected to be transferred for burial at the Topchider cemetery, next to the grave of the general’s daughter.

The President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMUT) in The Hague, Judge Graciela Gatti Santana, on May 14 rejected the request of Mladic's family and lawyers to temporarily release him for treatment in Serbia. Mladic died on August 27 in the prison hospital of the UN Detention Center in The Hague.