BELGRADE – The body of a former Serbian dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, returned to his homeland from The Hague yesterday and was greeted by a few hundred weeping supporters ahead of a private burial in his birthplace at the weekend.

A crowd of mainly elderly people wailed and cried out: “Slobo we love you” and “Slobo hero” as the blue van carrying his flag-draped coffin drove slowly out of the airport, almost five years since his dramatic extradition to The Hague where he died on Saturday.

A Belgrade housewife, Milena Plavsic, 45, shook with grief and said: “I’ve come to say goodbye and wish eternal rest to the greatest fighter of freedom who gave his life in an unjust fight.”

Milosevic’s open casket is due to go on display either in a tent in front of the federal parliament building or in the Museum of May 25 from noon today, his Socialist party announced.

They had failed to get the necessary permission to put it on show in their headquarters or for a state funeral.

Posters of the former president of Yugoslavia and Serbia and Montenegro until his overthrow in 2000 were being glued to lampposts in the city center yesterday evening.

After days of wrangling, in which the government and Belgrade city council stood firm against demands by Milosevic loyalists for a high-profile funeral in the capital, it was announced the burial would take place on Saturday afternoon in the disgraced politician’s central hometown of Pozarevace. His mother, who committed suicide, is buried in the local cemetery.

The Pozarevac municipal authorities, who are made up of Milosevic supporters, welcomed the decision.

Tens of thousands of mourners are expected to descend on the medium sized industrial town.

But the question still remained whether Milosevic’s wife, Mira Markovic, and their son Marko who live in exile in Moscow, would attend.

Both fear for their safety and Ms. Markovic faces charges of corruption as well as being wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of one of her husband’s political opponents.

Serbian police have been ordered to seize her passport when she enters the country, the interior minister, Dragan Jocic, said. The Socialist party is to pay her bail of about $17,000. Meanwhile, Milosevic opponents were discussing plans to organize a “counter demonstration” to the funeral.

Their aim is to show the world that not everybody is in favor of the man who led them into the wars of the 1990s.

“The thought of the world looking at these herds who mourn Milosevic and thinking that they represent today’s Serbia should not be allowed to happen,” one said in an Internet chat room.

Following his deposal as president of the rump Yugoslavia in 2000, Milosevic was transferred the following year to the custody of the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia in The Hague where he was indicted on charges of war crimes.

It was there in his cell last Saturday, four years into the process that had just months to run that Milosevic died of a heart attack.

Questions were still being asked yesterday about the circumstances surrounding his death.

Results of toxicology tests are due to be released today. Doctors in The Hague say he was using unauthorized medicine, while his family and supporters claim that he was poisoned.