Thousands join Serbia protest demanding release of Mladic

More than 3,000 riot police took positions around government buildings and Western embassies, fearing that the demonstration could turn violent, as similar rallies have in the past. Riot police blocked small groups of extremists from reaching the rally.

Some in the crowd, which numbered at least 7,000, chanted right-wing slogans. A few gave Nazi salutes. Demonstrators said Serbia should not hand Mladic over to the UN war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands.

“Co-operation with The Hague tribunal represents treason,” Serbian Radical Party official Lidija Vukicevic told the crowd. “This is a protest against the shameful arrest of the Serbian hero.”

Demonstrators demanded the ousting of Serbia’s pro-Western President Boris Tadic, who ordered Mladic’s arrest. A sign on the stage read “Tadic is not Serbia”.

Supporters of the extreme nationalist Radical Party were bussed in to attend the rally. Right-wing extremists and hooligan groups have also urged followers to appear in large numbers.

Nationalists are furious that the pro-Western government apprehended Mladic on Thursday after nearly 16 years on the run. The 69-year-old former general was caught at a relative’s home in a northern Serbian village.

The UN tribunal charged Mladic with genocide in 1995, accusing him of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and other war crimes of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

Mladic’s arrest is considered critical to Serbia’s efforts to join the European Union, and to reconciliation in the region after a series of ethnic wars of the 1990s.

Mladic’s son, Darko Mladic, said that despite the indictment, his father insists he was not responsible for the mass executions committed by his troops after they overran the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995. “Whatever was done behind his back, he has nothing to do with that,” Darko Mladic said.

The massacre in Srebrenica is considered to be Europe’s worst atrocity since the Second World War. Bosnian Serb troops under Mladic’s command rounded up boys and men and executed them over several days, burying the remains in mass graves in the area. Prosecutors say they have compelling evidence that Mladic personally ordered and oversaw the executions in and around Srebrenica.

But Serb nationalists in Serbia and parts of Bosnia still consider Mladic a hero – the general who against all odds tried to defend Serbs in the Bosnian conflict. Among his men, Mladic commanded fierce devotion – many Bosnian Serb soldiers pledged to follow him to the death.

Some 3,000 supporters arrived by bus from other parts of Bosnia to a rally at Kalinovik, the area where Mladic grew up. Many wore black T-shirts with Mladic’s picture and the words ‘Serbia in my heart’.

The crowd called Mr Tadic a “betrayer” for ordering the arrest of “the Serb hero” and urged him to “kill himself”.

Many of the Kalinovik protesters headed afterward to the shack Mladic was born in at the end of a steep, muddy road in the village of Bozanici, turning the shabby house into a pilgrimage site. Mladic’s aunt and cousins spoke to them, telling stories about Mladic’s childhood.

Mladic’s family and lawyers have been fighting his extradition, arguing that the former general is too ill to face charges.

The family plans to appeal against the extradition today and to demand an independent medical check-up – moves described by the authorities as a delaying tactics.

“He’s a man who has not taken care of his health for a while, but not to the point that he cannot stand trial,” Serbia’s deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said. “According to doctors, he doesn’t need hospitalisation.”

Mladic has suffered at least two, and possibly three, strokes, according to his son.