Red Star Fans Display Ratko Mladic Tifo Before Belgrade Derby

Red Star Belgrade supporters unveiled a large tifo depicting convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic before the club’s derby against Partizan Belgrade on Sunday night. Red Star went on to win the Serbian top-flight match 2-1, according to BBC Sport, which reported on the display and its surrounding context on Monday.

Watch the highlights:

The tifo appeared before one of Serbian football’s most prominent fixtures. Red Star’s own social media accounts subsequently published footage showing the display, as well as the two teams observing a minute’s silence for Mladic. The posts included a saluting emoji, BBC Sport reported. Bosnia-Herzegovina’s national team responded to Red Star’s post on X with an obscenity.

Mladic died in a United Nations prison in August. In 2017, he was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. His forces were responsible for the systematic killing of non-Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1995.

His crimes included overseeing the Srebrenica massacre, in which 8,000 men and boys were killed, and the siege of Sarajevo, where more than 10,000 people died. Mladic initially benefited from the protection of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who later died while on trial for genocide. Mladic then spent more than a decade in hiding before he was found at a remote farmhouse.

The derby display followed an earlier incident involving Red Star supporters this season. UEFA fined the club 90,000 euros, reported by the BBC as approximately £77,000, after fans unveiled a banner commemorating Mladic during a Europa League play-off against Czech club Viktoria Plzen last month. The latest display therefore came after European football’s governing body had already sanctioned Red Star over similar conduct.

Despite his convictions, Mladic continues to be celebrated by some people in Serbia. Thousands gathered at a Belgrade church for his funeral on Monday, according to the BBC report. Against that backdrop, the tifo at the Partizan derby linked a major domestic football occasion with renewed public commemoration of a figure convicted over atrocities committed during the Bosnian war.