Belgrade commemorates Ratko Mladic two days before his burial

A commemoration for Ratko Mladic was held at noon on Saturday at the House of the Serbian Army in central Belgrade, two days before his burial. About 300 people filled the hall, organised by an association of retired and serving generals rather than by the government. Dozens more stood outside because the room was full. Some wore shirts printed with Mladic in uniform and the words "Serbian Hero."

Mladic's son Darko and widow Bosiljka attended. So did Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujic and Republika Srpska President Sinisa Karan, with interior minister Zeljko Budimir and labour and veterans minister Radan Ostojic from the Bosnian Serb entity. Former Serbian prime minister Nikola Sainovic, himself convicted in The Hague for crimes against Albanian civilians in 1999, was also there. Speakers called Mladic a towering figure as a man and a soldier.

Mladic died on 27 August, aged 84, after several strokes while serving a life sentence at the UN detention centre in The Hague. He had been convicted of genocide for the 1995 killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica, and of other war crimes from the 1990s wars in Bosnia and Croatia. He was arrested in May 2011 in Lazarevo, near Zrenjanin, after 16 years in hiding. His family's requests to treat him in Serbia were refused.

Serbia flew the body home on a government aircraft on Thursday. Vujic was on the plane. An honour guard met the coffin, which was draped in the Serbian flag, and a police escort took it into the city. Supporters waited on overpasses with banners reading "Thank you, General" and "Welcome home, General." The U.S. Embassy in Belgrade issued a security alert for Saturday's commemoration and for Monday's funeral, warning that tens of thousands could attend the burial.

The funeral plan is now narrower than the first signals from the justice ministry. Vujic had spoken of military and state honours. The burial on Monday will instead proceed without serving national officials in the ceremony, without an artillery salute and without a plot in the Alley of the Greats or the Alley of Distinguished Citizens. The body will lie at the Church of St. Luke in Vidikovac from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The funeral service is listed at 12:35 p.m., after which the procession is due at Topcider cemetery. President Aleksandar Vucic said he will not attend because Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev is on an official visit.

Brussels has already called any glorification incompatible with the values of Serbia's EU path. That warning is why the distinction between Thursday's flag-draped arrival and Monday's stripped ceremony matters. The state provided the aircraft and the honour guard. It is now trying to say the burial is a family and veterans' affair. The presence of the sitting justice minister at Saturday's commemoration undercuts that line even if the cabinet stays away on Monday.

Bosnian camp survivors and governments that backed the Hague tribunal will treat the shirts, the banners and the generals' eulogies as the story, not the seating plan. Inside Serbia the story is different. A large part of the public still reads Mladic as a wartime commander who defended Serbs, not as a man convicted of genocide. The Army House event was built for that public. The EU statements are built for another one.

Monday will test which audience the Serbian state fears more. A quiet burial at Topcider with family and veterans is one outcome. A street procession measured in tens of thousands is another. The embassy alert assumes the second. The government's revised honours list assumes it can have the first while still having flown the coffin home under the flag.