The president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, confirmed this Thursday that the mortal remains of the former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, who died on August 27 while serving a sentence in a prison in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity, will be transferred throughout the day to Serbian territory for the organization of his funeral.
"As far as I know, the body has been delivered and should arrive this afternoon in Serbia," Vucic pointed out, who specified that it will be the son of the former military man, Darko Mladic, who will be responsible for communicating the details about the ceremonies, according to the Serbian state news agency, Tanjug.
The leader also emphasized that the country's institutions will take on the task of "providing all kinds of support, logistics, and transportation" in order to "preserve public order, peace, and security" during Mladic's funeral, nicknamed 'the butcher of Bosnia' and sentenced in November 2017 for his responsibility in crimes committed during the Bosnian war (1992-1995).
The authorities of the Netherlands communicated on August 28 that they would not carry out a criminal investigation into Mladic's death in custody and that they would also not perform an autopsy. Subsequently, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals indicated that it was in discussions with the family to address "the transfer of Mladic's remains."
Mladic, convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) after being found guilty of ten charges, including the genocide of Srebrenica in July 1995, died "while hospitalized in The Hague," according to that judicial mechanism.