European Union Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, gave a speech at the Bled Strategic Forum, where she spoke about the death of Ratko Mladic, the glorification of the war criminal, and Serbia’s plans for his burial with the highest military and state honors.
In her speech, Kos emphasized that Ratko Mladic was a convicted war criminal, who was serving a life sentence for genocide and crimes against humanity in Srebrenica.
“The glorification of Ratko Mladic as a war criminal is contrary to fundamental European values and has no place in the European Union, nor in countries that aspire to become part of the union. I hope that the government in Belgrade understands what is at stake,” the commissioner told reporters at the Bled Strategic Forum.
She also stressed that she will monitor the situation in Serbia, writes klix.ba.
“This will also be the basis for how we will assess the development of events,” Kos said.
Serbia’s Justice Minister, Nenad Vujic, had previously stated that Ratko Mladic is entitled to all military and state honors.
Ratko Mladic was the Chief of General Staff of the Bosnian Serb Army from 1992 to 1995. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague sentenced him to life imprisonment in November 2017. The sentence was confirmed in 2021.
Under his leadership, the Bosnian Serb army killed around 8,700 Bosniaks, mostly men and boys, in Srebrenica in July 1995. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has described the killings committed by Bosnian Serb forces as genocide in several court decisions. The aim was to exterminate Bosniaks.
These events are considered among the worst mass killings in Europe since World War II. /Telegraph/