Red Star fans staged a performance in honor of the convicted war criminal

The fans of Red Star Belgrade found themselves at the center of another scandal. Before and during Sunday's Serbian Super League match against arch-rivals local Partizan, fans staged a large-scale performance depicting convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic. The club itself published a video of a moment of silence on the social network X before the starting whistle, in the background of which the unfurled banner in honor of Mladic is clearly visible. The incident comes amid recent sanctions from the European football governing body. UEFA fined Red Star 90,000 euros (about $104,500) last week. The reason was the chanting of Mladic's name and the congratulatory gestures of the fans during the Europa League playoff match on August 27, in which the Belgraders lost to Victoria with a score of 1:5. Ratko Mladic is a former Bosnian Serb commander convicted of leading the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where more than 8,000 Muslims were killed, as well as other war crimes. He was on the run from justice for 16 years before he was arrested in 2011 and sentenced by the UN International Criminal sourcesl to life in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity. Mladic died at the age of 84 in The Hague, where he was serving his sentence. According to reports, thousands of people gathered in Sarajevo on Monday for events related to his burial. It will be recalled that Crvena Zvezda won a strong-willed victory over Partizan with a score of 2:1 in the Belgrade derby, which took place on September 6, 2026, as part of the 8th round of the Serbian Super League. This result allowed the red-whites to win their sixth in a row and stay at the top of the tournament table with 18 points. For Partizan, this defeat extended the winless streak in matches against a principle rival, which has been going on since December 2023.