UEFA Fines Red Star Belgrade €90,000 Over Fan Chants Honoring War Criminal Ratko Mladic

Since Ratko Mladic died at 84 in a UN prison hospital in The Hague on Aug. 27, the fallout has split into two separate fights: one over a soccer match, the other over how Serbia buries him.

The UEFA Fine

UEFA's Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body announced Friday that Red Star Belgrade must pay 90,000 euros, about $104,500, for fan misconduct during the club's Aug. 27 Europa League playoff loss to Czech side Viktoria Plzen, according to Daily Sabah and the Associated Press.

Red Star's traveling supporters, known as the Delije, chanted Mladic's name, performed military-style salutes and unfurled a banner praising him during the match, which Red Star lost 5-1 after extra time, completing a 5-4 aggregate collapse from a 3-0 first-leg lead, per Daily Sabah. Red Star's own social media accounts posted images from the game that included some of the displays, drawing extra scrutiny from UEFA.

UEFA classified the conduct as racist and discriminatory and cited the transmission of a message unfit for a sporting event, according to The Independent and the Washington Post. Beyond the fine, Red Star is banned from selling tickets to away fans for its next away fixture in European competition, a Conference League trip to Swiss club Lugano scheduled for mid-October, according to Sweden Herald. A second away-ticket ban was imposed but deferred for two years, meaning it kicks in only if Red Star's fans repeat the offense.

This isn't Red Star's first UEFA sanction. The Independent notes the club has a disciplinary history that includes racist slurs targeting Roma fans, and Daily Sabah reports previous incidents involving glorification of Mladic specifically.

The Funeral Fight

Serbian Justice Minister Nenad Vujic told broadcaster K1 on Aug. 28 that Mladic would likely receive full state honors. "It is certain that General Mladic will receive all the military and state honors to which he is entitled, as far as the state is concerned," Vujic said, according to the Epoch Times.

That prompted a warning from Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, speaking Aug. 31 at the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia. Plenkovic said a full state funeral would effectively end Serbia's chances of joining the European Union. "It is as if they are closing the doors to the European Union for themselves," he said, per Croatia's state broadcaster HRT.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos echoed that warning a day later. "The glorification of war criminals has no place ... in an EU member country, nor in a candidate country," Kos said, according to the German news agency DPA. "I hope that the government in Belgrade knows what is at stake."

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has a different grievance. He criticized the Hague tribunal on Aug. 28 for denying Mladic's request, made last month, to be released so he could die in Serbia. "We have seen now that The Hague wanted Mladic's death behind bars," Vucic said. "They did not allow the general to die in Serbia, where he wanted to die. That is uncivilized behavior, without precedent or justification." Vucic also said Belgrade had received no information from the tribunal on when Mladic's body would be repatriated.

Vucic's complaint is worth taking on its own terms: a request by a dying 84-year-old prisoner to spend his final days in his home country, denied by the same UN court that convicted him, is a genuine humanitarian question separate from what Mladic did to earn his sentence. The tribunal's reasoning for the denial isn't detailed in available reporting, and no source here explains why the request was refused.

Two Views of the Same Man

Munira Subasic of the Mothers of Srebrenica group, whose members lost relatives in the 1995 massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys, said she had mixed feelings about his death, according to Breitbart. "Today, a major war criminal died," she said, adding that she regretted he hadn't suffered longer and that his crimes are "still being denied among many Bosnian Serbs."

In Pale, a Bosnian Serb stronghold near Sarajevo, former Bosnian Serb soldier Janko Seslija mourned him instead. "He was murdered there, in those dungeons," Seslija told the AP. "I feel sorry for Gen. Mladic. He was an honorable man, honorable soldier and commander."

Mladic was convicted in 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, stemming from the Srebrenica massacre, the siege of Sarajevo and the operation of concentration camps for non-Serb civilians during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, per the Independent and Fox News.

As of this week, Serbia had not announced a final decision on the funeral, and no timeline has been given for returning Mladic's remains to Belgrade. Whether Vucic's government proceeds with state honors, and how Brussels responds if it does, remains the open question hanging over Serbia's EU membership bid.