Slobodan Milosevic has been laid to rest beneath a tree in the back garden of the family estate in his hometown – an anticlimactic end to one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of the turbulent Balkans.

Thousands of mourners packed a square in front of Belgrade’s federal parliament building today to bid a final farewell to Slobodan Milosevic, who died while on UN trial for some of Europe’s worst atrocities since the Second World War.