Hundreds have gathered in Belgrade for the funeral of former Bosnian-Serb army leader and convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic, who died in the Scheveningen prison at the age of 84 in late August. The burial is taking place this afternoon, attended by family, former soldiers, officials, and Serbia’s Minister of Justice, Nenad Vujic. Though not a state funeral – a designation the European Union actively sought to prevent – the event draws significant crowds. President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia is absent due to the EU’s concerns. Mladic was sentenced to life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague in 2017 for genocide and crimes against humanity, specifically for the massacre of over 8,000 Bosnian boys and men in the Srebrenica enclave in 1995. After fifteen years of detention following his arrest in Serbia in 2011, ending sixteen years on the run, Mladic’s body arrived in Belgrade this week and was initially commemorated at the army’s “cultural house”. He has been lying in state since 7:00 AM at the St. Luke Orthodox Church in Belgrade, where families are lighting candles, and many Serbians view the nationalist figure as a hero.