Ratko Mladić, the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, given hero’s funeral in Serbia

Von: Ana Milosavljevic in Belgrade and Oliver Holmes

07. September 2026 um 12:20

Fanfare at Belgrade funeral of man convicted of genocide raises questions from EU over Serbia’s membership plan

Ratko Mladić, a Serbian general convicted of orchestrating the worst massacre in Europe since the second world war, has been given a hero’s funeral attended by thousands in Belgrade despite international alarm.

Known as the “Butcher of Bosnia” for his role during the Balkans genocide in the 1990s, Mladić died in prison in late August aged 84 while serving a life sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Serbia’s Grief Over Mladic’s Death is Neither Honourable Nor Dignified

Serbia | Balkan Insight

Von: Sofija Todorovic

02. September 2026 um 15:38

Official tributes to the convicted war criminal, openly glorifying his deeds, are another reminder that Serbia has yet to come to terms with its bloody past.

Serbia’s Grief Over Mladic’s Death is Neither Honourable Nor Dignified

Balkan Insight

Von: Sofija Todorovic

02. September 2026 um 15:38

Official tributes to the convicted war criminal, openly glorifying his deeds, are another reminder that Serbia has yet to come to terms with its bloody past.

Ratko Mladić, the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, could not escape death. But his fascist ideas and ideology live on | Ed Vulliamy

The Guardian

Von: Ed Vulliamy

30. August 2026 um 14:00

When I testified against Mladić at his trial in The Hague, I saw the unrepentant face of a mass murderer. That face and his legacy still haunt Serbia today

Men age and die, but in the Balkans, time stands still and is stuck. General Ratko Mladić, who died in prison in The Hague on Thursday aged 84, remains a hero in the Republika Srpska statelet – the Serbian half of dismembered Bosnia that he carved out with a hurricane of violence between 1992 and 1995 – and in Serbia itself.

Too many Serbs in whose name Mladić carried out his mass murder of other ethnicities – mainly Muslim Bošniak and Roman Catholic Croats – adore him and mourn his passing.

Ed Vulliamy is an author who reported on the Balkan war for the Guardian and Observer

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‘The butcher may be gone, but to many he is a hero’: victims condemn glorification of Mladić

The Guardian

Von: Kim Willsher

29. August 2026 um 05:00

Architect of Srebrenica genocide is dead but those scarred by his atrocities say his ideology is still shockingly pervasive

To most of the world, he was and will always be the “Butcher of Bosnia”, a grim epithet but one that still fails to fully convey the evil and horror inflicted on its people by Gen Ratko Mladić, who died in prison on Thursday.

As commander of the Bosnian Serb forces, Mladić was responsible for the killing of an estimated 100,000 men, women and children during the savage breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He was most notoriously the architect of ethnic cleansing and the genocide at Srebrenica in which at least 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were slaughtered.

Ratko Mladić, the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, dies in The Hague

The Guardian

Von: Peter Beaumont Senior international correspondent

27. August 2026 um 17:12

Bosnian Serb commander responsible for Srebrenica massacre dies in prison while serving life sentence for genocide

From the archive:

Ratko Mladić, the infamous Serbian general who was serving a life sentence for genocide committed during the Bosnian war, has died in prison in The Hague.

Mladić had been one of the main architects of the policy of ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian war. He was convicted of genocide for orchestrating the 1995 killing of at least 8,000 Muslims in the UN-designated “safe area” Srebrenica, the worst massacre in Europe since the second world war.

My Father’s Diaries review – haunting home-video excavates trauma of Srebrenica massacre

The Guardian

Von: Phuong Le

11. Mai 2026 um 07:00

Ado Hasanović’s moving documentary transforms footage filmed during the Bosnian war into a devastating portrait of memory, survival and inherited grief

For years, film-maker Ado Hasanović has wanted to ask his father, Bekir, about his harrowing experiences during the Bosnian war but their conversations usually ended with curt, abrupt answers that obscured rather than illuminated the past. Bekir might be uncommunicative, but his collection of self-taped films and diary entries recorded during the height of the conflict tells a different story. Culled from this powerful personal archive, Hasanović’s poignant documentary forges a dialogue not just with history, but also across generations.

In 1993, along with two other friends, Bekir formed a film-making collective called John, Ben & Boys in the small mountain town of Srebrenica. As the war escalated, what began as a playful amateur exercise quickly transformed into intentional documentation, as if Bekir was already aware of the genocidal carnage that would soon come. With his small DV camera, he captured the camaraderie of his Bosniak community as well as the terror they endured as Serbian paramilitary groups neared. In scenes of good-humoured gatherings, captured in grainy, textured images, the terrifying sounds of gunshots and bombs ring in the air.

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