The Serbian Army Guard at Nebojsa Pavkovic’s funeral in Belgrade, October 22 2025. Photo: mod.gov.rs.
Nebojsa Pavkovic, a former Yugoslav Army General sentenced to 22 years in prison for war crimes, was buried in the Alley of Meritorious Citizens in the New Cemetery in Belgrade on Wednesday with military honours, at a funeral attended by Serbian government ministers.
Pavkovic died in Belgrade on Monday after being released from jail in Finland a month ago on health grounds. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, found him guilty in 2009 of being part of a joint criminal enterprise whose aim was the persecution and forcible removal of Albanians from Kosovo during the war. He was also found guilty of murder.
In 2014, the ICTY appeals chamber upheld the 2009 verdict that convicted Pavkovic and three other high-profile Yugoslav military and civilian officials.
Serbia’s Minister of Culture, Nikola Selakovic, the Minister for Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs, Milica Djurdjevic Stamenkovski, and Defence Minister Bratislav Gasic all attended the funeral. Serbian Army Chief of General Staff Milan Mojsilovic was also present, as were former ministers Aleksandar Vulin and Danica Grujicic.
The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre said on Wednesday that the burial of Pavkovic in this distinguished part of the cemetery “represents an open denial of the facts established by the court and a mockery of the victims.
“By giving state honours to a convicted war criminal, along with a false image of ‘honour, courage and service to the motherland’, the government increases the pressure on the captive society in Serbia, especially on the youth, to stand up for the ‘heroes who defended the Serbian people’, who were allegedly unjustly convicted,” the Humanitarian Law Centre said in a press release.
Opposition MP Dobrica Veselinovic also criticised the decision. “As a society, we must stop wandering off the beaten path with politicians who have already quarrelled us with the whole world many times, fought with our neighbours and led thousands of people to their deaths. Burial in the Alley sends a wrong and dangerous message!” Veselinovic wrote on X.
At another commemoration for Pavkovic, held earlier on Wednesday at the Central Military Club in Belgrade, Selakovic, Gasic and Mojsilovic were also present, along with Serbia’s Kosovo office chief, Petar Petkovic.
During his time in prison, Pavkovic wrote books that were published by the Serbian Defence Ministry. He also participated online in several television and YouTube shows in Serbia. Serbian pro-government and far-right media hailed him as a hero after his death.
Belgrade city regulations define a meritorious citizen as someone “who during his lifetime was distinguished and made a relevant contribution to the field of work in which he was active”. Since April 2024, approvals for burials in this part of the cemetery are made by a commission involving the relevant ministries, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Olympic Committee of Serbia, and the Belgrade City Administration.
As wall as various people from politics, culture and art, the Yugoslav Army General who participated in the 1991 attack on the Croatian town of Vukovar, Mladen Bratic, was buried in this part of the cemetery. So was Radovan ‘Badza’ Stojicic, a senior police officer and head of Territorial Defence forces in Croatia, affiliated with Serbian State Security, who was killed in a mafia shooting in Belgrade.