Reburial of former king and other members of Yugoslavian royal family takes place decades after their deaths in exile
Hundreds of mourners attended the reburial on Sunday of the former king Petar II Karadjordjevic and other members of the deposed Yugoslavian royal family, decades after their deaths in exile.
Serbian leaders attended the event – seen as an important act of national reconciliation – at the Oplenac royal chapel in the southwestern town of Topola.
The bodies of Petar, his wife Queen Aleksandra, mother Queen Maria and brother Prince Andrej, had been exhumed from cemeteries in the US, Britain and Greece.
The four coffins were draped in Serbian royal flags and escorted by Serb army guardsmen.
Petar succeeded his father King Aleksandar in 1934, who was assassinated in Marseilles, France, by Croatian and Bulgarian nationalists.
After Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, Petar fled the country and spent the most of the second world war in exile in Britain. After the war, Petar was proclaimed a traitor by the communists, who abolished the monarchy.
His property was confiscated and he remained exiled until his death in the US in 1970.
Among those attending the state funeral were the Serbian president, Tomislav Nikolic, Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, Patriarch Irinej and the head of Serb Orthodox church.
The ceremony was an act of reconciliation between those Serbs who supported the royal family during the second world war and those who backed the communist forces.
Tens of thousands died in Serbia between 1941 and 1945 in a civil war between royalist guerrillas and communist partisans who also fought the German occupiers. The two camps are still at odds.
"More Serbs were killed by the Serbian hand than by the hand of the occupier," Nikolic said in a eulogy. "We cannot, we must not allow divisions and injustice anymore."
After the war, royalist supporters were killed or persecuted by the government of Josip Broz Tito.
Petar's son, Crown Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjevic, and his family were allowed to return to Serbia in mid-1990s by Slobodan Milosevic as Yugoslavia disintegrated .
"This funeral was the fulfilment of historic justice. They had to be brought home," said Zoran Kotarac, a mourner from the village of Slankamen, north of Belgrade.
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