Thousands turn out in Serbia for funeral of 'Butcher of Bosnia' Ratko Mladić

Thousands of people have turned out in Serbia's capital, Belgrade, to attend the funeral of the convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić.

Widely known as the Butcher of Bosnia, Mladić died at the age of 84 while serving a life sentence in the UN prison in The Hague, the Netherlands.

He was found guilty of genocide by a UN war crimes tribunal for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, when around 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were killed. It was described as Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.

A Serbian government minister had initially said that Mladić would be given a state funeral ​but those plans were changed after objections from some European leaders. On Monday, the EU denounced Mladić's "glorification".

Thousands took part in a public memorial on the day of the funeral ceremony

"Ratko Mladić was a convicted war criminal who had committed war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity," the EU said in a statement.

"Any glorification of war criminals, genocide denial and revisionism contradict the most fundamental European values and have no place in the EU or in EU candidate countries," the statement said.

Serbia has been a candidate to join the EU since 2012, even though membership talks have recently stalled.

Men wearing flags as capes, with the picture of Mladić, stood among the crowd in Belgrade

Ratko Mladić commanded Bosnian Serb forces in the 1990s against the Bosnian Croat and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) armies.

During the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, his troops committed what became known as "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia-Herzegovina in a bid to expel the non-Serbian population by force. They besieged the capital city of Sarajevo, with the deaths of more than 10,000 people.

Mladić was arrested in 2011, 16 years after he was first indicted, and sentenced to life in prison in 2021 after a nine-year trial.