Former military leader of the Bosnian Serbs Ratko Mladic will be buried “with the military and state honors to which he is entitled,” Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujić announced on the local K1 radio station.

Ratko Mladić, who had been seriously ill for months, died yesterday in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

“It is certain that General Mladić will receive all the military and state honors to which he is entitled,” Vujić said. Serbian officials are waiting to learn when the authorities in The Hague will hand over the body, he said. “We are ready to travel to The Hague as soon as we learn what the next steps will be,” the minister said.

The Srebrenica massacre was at the time probably one of the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. Mladić died a few days after the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals rejected, for the latest time, a request by his family and the Serbian government to transfer him to a military hospital in Belgrade so that he could receive treatment there.

Ratko Mladić was part of a triumvirate – alongside former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević and former political leader of the Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadžić – at a time when the former Yugoslavia was descending into civil war following the collapse of communism.

The 1992–1995 war in Bosnia claimed the lives of approximately 100,000 people and displaced another 2.2 million people.

According to the court, in Srebrenica, Serbian forces under the command of Ratko Mladić executed 8,000 Bosnian Muslims who had sought refuge in what was supposed to be an enclave under the protection of the United Nations.