Mladic's body handed over to family: burial on September 7 in Belgrade

On September 3 the United Nations residual Mechanism released the body of Ratko Mladic. His son Darko collected it in The Hague; the plane carrying the coffin then departed for Belgrade. We reported on this on August 28 and, on the internal inquiry opened by the Mechanism, on August 31: at that time Belgrade said it was ready for the transfer but had no dates. Now the dates are set.

The announced timetable includes two separate moments. The commemoration is scheduled for Saturday, September 5, at 12:00, at the Army House on Braće Jugovića street, in central Belgrade. The funeral is planned for Monday, September 7, at Topčider cemetery: the body will lie in state from 9:00 to 12:30 at the Church of Saint Luke, in the Vidikovac district, with the funeral rite at 12:35.

Today’s information framework should be read with a clarification about its origin. The news of the handover, the expected late-afternoon arrival time and the attendance estimates come from statements made to journalists by Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić, picked up by several outlets: the multiplicity of outlets does not multiply the sources. On the timing and locations of the funeral, confirmation also comes from Serbian media that published them in the form of a program. The Tanjug agency is a Serbian state source: we use it here only to attribute a statement, not as independent confirmation of a fact.

On public order, Vučić said he expected tens of thousands of participants, citing assessments from the intelligence agency BIA, the military security service VBA and the Interior Ministry. These are preliminary estimates communicated by the executive, not measured figures: they will need to be compared with what actually happens on Monday. “A demanding task awaits our services and we will use everything to ensure it” (transl. from Serbian), the president said, referring to the security arrangements.

The choice of burial site had remained, until yesterday, the open question, and on this point the official position expressed by Belgrade and Sarajevo has been not to intervene. The ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serbia, Aleksandar Vranješ, stated that “the decision on the burial is up to the family, without creating pressure” (transl. from Serbian). Topčider, a southern district of the Serbian capital, is therefore a family decision and not an institutional designation.

One element indicates that mobilization preceded the timetable: on September 1, when the date and location were not yet known, veterans’ organizations from the Republika Srpska were already collecting sign-ups to organize transport to the funeral. This signals that part of the attendance expected in Belgrade will come from the Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, that is, across an international border, and this places the event outside the perimeter of Serbia’s public order management alone.

Several elements remain outside the material available today: there are no reports on the concrete security arrangements, nor any indication of institutional presence at the September 5 commemoration, nor official reactions from Sarajevo to the setting of the dates. The next verifiable check is elementary in nature: how many people will show up on Monday morning at the Church of Saint Luke between 9:00 and 12:30, a direct measure of the tens-of-thousands estimate announced by the Serbian government.

Sources: B92; Danas / BBC News na srpskom; Mašina; Tanjug (Serbian state agency); Kurir.