BELGRADE: Crowds began gathering in Belgrade on Monday (Sep 7) morning for the funeral of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic, as Brussels accused some in the country of "glorification" of a man convicted of genocide during the 1990s war in Bosnia.

Mladic died in late August, aged 84, while serving a life sentence in The Hague for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the war in Bosnia.

Mourners streamed into St Luka church in Belgrade from 7am (1pm, Singapore time) to pay respects, with many kissing Mladic's closed coffin, as Serbian Orthodox priests read prayers.

Police had closed off streets in the surrounding part of the city as crowds began arriving.

AFP reporters saw large crowds outside the church, many wearing shirts praising Mladic, as doors opened with aerial images showing hundreds already queuing to enter.

Serbian flags had been hung nearby, and a huge banner unfurled across the street read: "Welcome, General, thanks be to your mother for bearing a hero, so that Serbdom's glory may return."

"I am here to see off the general, a national hero," pensioner Radojka Visic, who had travelled from Bosnia's Serb entity, Republika Srpska, told AFP.

"They couldn't defeat us on the battlefield, so they sent him to prison and tortured him there instead," Visic said, referring to...