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MILENKO KRSTIC, MISS OREGON’S FATHER INVOLVED IN SREBRENICA GENOCIDE
PHOTO OF EVIL: Srebrenica genocide suspect, Milenko Krstic, on left (in glasses), waits in his seat to cheer for his daughter Danijela, now Miss Oregon. Next to him is his wife Branka and their daughter Aleksandra. The photo was taken at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on Jan. 24, 2009 during the 2009 Miss American Pageant.
Milenko Krstic (52), the father of Miss Oregon, was an active member of a Bosnian Serb army’s Zvornik brigade. The unit participated in the mass killings of 8,000 to 10,000 unarmed Bosniaks (Muslims) and a forcible deportation at least 25,000 people during the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Krstic admittedly worked in the headquarters of the Bosnian Serb army, providing logistical support to the unit responsible for terrorizing Muslims in and around Srebrenica and committing genocide in July 1995.
In 1998 Krstic and his family emigrated to the United States. As part of a refugee application, he filled out an I-590 form, which requires applicants to disclose foreign military service. He denied having served in the military “during a sworn, personal interview administered in Belgrade.”
In 1999, he applied to become lawful permanent resident. As part of the application, Krstic filled out another form. This time, I-485 form, also required him to report any prior foreign military service. Krstic again refused to disclose his service in the genocidal army. As a result, he fraudulently obtained a green card.
HE EVEN ADMITTED LYING
FURTHER RESEARCH
Srebrenica genocide suspects in the United States:
1. Nedjo Ikonic – Serb War Criminal Hiding in the United States
2. Suspect Avoids Genocide Charges 3 weeks after Genocide Accountability Act Enacted
3. Phoenix, Arizona – A Mecca for Serb Suspects of Srebrenica Massacre
4. The United States Deports Two Serbs Wanted for Srebrenica Massacre
5. Bosnian Serb Immigrants Failed to Disclose Their Past Service in Genocidal Military
6. Marko Boskic – Srebrenica Genocide Mass Murderer
7. Butcher of Srebrenica Wants His Own Admission Squashed
8. Srebrenica Genocide Gunman, Marko Boskic, Will Not Face Torture Charges
9. Elusive Justice: A Man Who Gunned Down 1,200 Srebrenica Bosniaks
10. Srebrenica Genocide Suspects Give Up Fight, Agree to be Deported to Bosnia
11. More Arrests of Srebrenica Genocide Suspects in the U.S.
12. List of Srebrenica Suspects Getting Away with Genocide
13. Bosnian Serb Deported from the U.S. After Lying on Immigration Paperwork
14. Deported Criminal Convicted for Crimes Against Humanity in Bosnia
15. Search our blog for more information. Look for Google Custom Search Box, it is located on the left-hand side.
NEDJO IKONIC – TRY HIM FOR GENOCIDE OR DEPORT HIM TO BOSNIA TO FACE GENOCIDE CHARGES!
ACT NOW: In January 2008, George W. Bush signed the U.S. Genocide Accountability Act of 2007, in part to help prosecute and convict Srebrenica Genocide fugitives hiding in the U.S. Now we have a case of Nedjo Ikonic, a Bosnian Serb fugitive who commanded a special police unit responsible for taking part in forcible deportations (ethnic cleansing) and mass murders of Bosniak civilians during the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide. U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman will likely set this Srebrenica Genocide fugitive free (on probation). The Judge is on record as saying “I am not a war crimes tribunal.” Contact the Judge today and tell him that his Court has legal responsibility, under the U.S. Genocide Accountability Act of 2007, to either prosecute Nedjo Ikonic for genocide in Srebrenica or order his deportation for prosecution by a panel of international judges under the jurisdiction of the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina.CONTACT JUDGE LYNN ADELMAN NOW!
E-mail: AdelmanPO@wied.uscourts.gov
Telephone: (414) 297-1285
Fax: (414) 297-1296
Chambers: Room 364
Courtroom: Room 390
TELL THE JUDGE Nedjo Ikonic should be tried for genocide – not released on probation! Under the U.S. Genocide Accountability Act of 2007, your court can and should prosecute Nedjo Ikonic for genocide, or order his deportation for prosecution by a panel of international judges under the jurisdiction of the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
NEDJO IKONIC – WANTED FOR GENOCIDE
Ikonic is wanted by Bosnian prosecutors for taking part in the Srebrenica Genocide when he commanded a police unit near Srebrenica during the 1995 massacre. However, the Bosnian government has not formally sought Ikonic’s extradition. Ikonic admitted that he commanded a special police unit that was sent to guard a stretch of road near Srebrenica. He didn’t disclose that on immigration forms in 2002 when he applied for refugee status.
According to the warrant, Nedjo Ikonic and the second man, Dejan Radojkovic of Las Vegas, carried out attacks on civilians during the Srebrenica Genocide.
Ikonic was originally indicted on eight counts of lying on immigration forms. However, on September 16 2008, Ikonic arranged a plea agreement with the prosecutor. The original indictment read: “Ikonic had assisted in the murder of Muslim men during the Srebrenica massacre in July of 1995.” After plea bargain was signed, that line was absent from the two counts to which he pleaded guilty for. Although the two counts carry a maximum of 20 years in prison, under the plea agreement, Ikonic is more likely to get a probation.
U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman delayed the sentencing to give Ikonic’s attorney Nikola Kostich more time to counter federal prosecutors’ claims that his client committed war crimes. The Judge set the next hearing for Feb. 24, but added, “I am not a war crimes tribunal.”
According to Newsday reporter Matthew McAllester, UN investigators believe men under the command of Nedjo Ikonic helped separate “over 1,000 Bosnian Muslim men from the women and children and transported these men to temporary detention sites in Bratunac on 12 and 13 July 1995.” Bosniak prisoners were tortured and killed at these sites in the town of Bratunac; most were kept there before being taken to other places to be executed. People under Ikonic’s command also articipated in the separation of men from women before at least 24 men and six women were the victims of “opportunistic killings” in the village of Potocari. Ikonic’s men “were present at the [Kravica] Warehouse when the executions started and [they also] participated in the killings.” More than 1,000 Bosniak men were shot dead in this episode on July 13. Additionally, men under his command summarily executed “a group of 10 to 15 Bosnian Muslim prisoners held in custody at Sandici meadow” on the evening of July 13.
CONTACT JUDGE LYNN ADELMAN NOW!
E-mail: AdelmanPO@wied.uscourts.gov
Telephone: (414) 297-1285
Fax: (414) 297-1296
Chambers: Room 364
Courtroom: Room 390
TELL THE JUDGE Nedjo Ikonic should be tried for genocide – not released on probation! Under the U.S. Genocide Accountability Act of 2007, your court can and should prosecute Nedjo Ikonic for genocide, or order his deportation for prosecution by a panel of international judges under the jurisdiction of the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
OF INTEREST: Read our debate with Chris Justice, an attorney who defended Srebrenica Genocide fugitive Milivoje Jankovic on immigration charges, at the following page in comments.
FURTHER RESEARCH:
1. Suspect Avoids Genocide Charges 3 weeks after Genocide Accountability Act Enacted
2. Phoenix, Arizona – A Mecca for Serb Suspects of Srebrenica Massacre
3. The United States Deports Two Serbs Wanted for Srebrenica Massacre
4. Bosnian Serb Immigrants Failed to Disclose Their Past Service in Genocidal Military
5. Marko Boskic – Srebrenica Genocide Mass Murderer
6. Butcher of Srebrenica Wants His Own Admission Squashed
7. Srebrenica Genocide Gunman, Marko Boskic, Will Not Face Torture Charges
8. Elusive Justice: A Man Who Gunned Down 1,200 Srebrenica Bosniaks
9. Srebrenica Genocide Suspects Give Up Fight, Agree to be Deported to Bosnia
10. More Arrests of Srebrenica Genocide Suspects in the U.S.
11. List of Srebrenica Suspects Getting Away with Genocide
12. Bosnian Serb Deported from the U.S. After Lying on Immigration Paperwork
13. Deported Criminal Convicted for Crimes Against Humanity in Bosnia
14. Search our blog for more information. Look for Google Custom Search Box, it is located on the left-hand side.
GENOCIDE SUSPECT, ZDRAVKO TOLIMIR, ARRESTED
THIRD MOST WANTED GENOCIDE SUSPECT, GENERAL ZDRAVKO TOLIMIR, ARRESTED FEW MILES AWAY FROM SREBRENICA
Zdravko Tolimir, a former Bosnian Serb general charged with genocide and crimes against humanity by the U.N.’s the International Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [ICTY], was arrested on the Bosnia-Serbia border – just a few kilometres from the town of Srebrenica, police said.
The United States Government offered $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Zdravko Tolimir.
Tolimir, who was reported to have organized Gen Ratko Mladic’s escape from justice, was arrested after a major security sweep of the border region with helicopters and anti-terrorist units, according to the Serbian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not entitled to release the information before Tolimir is sent to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. A Bosnian Serb spokeswoman said the arrest came as a result of a joint operation with Serbia.
“The whole action was the result of significant pressure from the outside,” said Natasa Kandic, head of Serbia’s Humanitarian Law Centre. “Nevertheless, it’s a step forward, and we can expect to see the arrests of other fugitives.”
Tolimir was a top aide to the Bosnian Serbs’ wartime military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, during the slaughter of about 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica in 1995 — the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II.
He was considered the third most wanted war crimes suspect still at large in the Balkans after Gen Ratko Mladic and Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic.
Rasim Ljajic, head of Serbia’s office for cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), said the detention showed a new determination on the part of Belgrade.
“This is the first time that not a single fugitive from the ICTY can sleep peacefully, because our civilian and military intelligence will work simultaneously on locating them,” he said.
“Tolimir was considered the mastermind of the actions to shelter Mladic for a long time,” Rasim Ljajic told state television.
The E.U. has linked the resumption of talks on closer ties with Serbia to the arrest of war crimes suspects.
Olga Kavran, the spokeswoman for the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia, said they were informed of Thursday’s arrest by Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik.
“We welcome the arrest of Gen. Tolimir … whom we consider responsible for genocide and other crimes in Srebrenica and the region,” Kavran said. “We hope that the remaining two charged with genocide, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, will be arrested soon.” Preparations are being made for his transfer to The Hague.
“We understand [he] has some health issues and we will try to assess what these issues are in order to make arrangements for his transportation to The Hague,” a tribunal spokesman told Reuters. Officials said the former general was ill, maybe with cancer.
“Former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are in Belgrade,” Olga Kavran told the Serbian daily Danas. Both men are indicted on two counts of genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnia war. Former Bosnian Serb political leader Karadzic has long been speculated to be in Russia, Bosnia or his native Montenegro.
Kavran said the tribunal had also passed on information to Serbian authorities regarding Mladic. Police raided a military boarding house in Belgrade on Tuesday night on a Hague tip-off, but did not find the former Bosnian Serb general.
The BBC’s Nicholas Walton in Sarajevo says the arrest of Gen Tolimir is an important breakthrough for those hunting other fugitives wanted in connection with the Bosnian War of the early 1990s.
As a ranking intelligence and security officer during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, Tolimir, 59, was charged in 2005 by the U.N. tribunal with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, extermination, murder, persecution, forcible transfer and deportation, as well as murder in connection with the Srebrenica massacre.
The indictment against Tolimir alleges that, “with an intent to destroy a part of the Bosnian Muslim people as a national, ethnical, or religious group, … (he) killed members of the group by planned and opportunistic summary executions.”
The “large scale systematic murder,” the indictment says, began on July 13, 1995, and continued for days until the “entire Muslim population had been either removed or fled” from Srebrenica and the nearby enclave of Zepa by November 1995.
“Over 7,000 Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica had been murdered” by the Bosnian Serb forces, the indictment said.
The charges say that he “committed, planned, instigated, ordered, and otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation, and execution of the crimes” against non-Serbs during the war, including in Srebrenica.
Both Gen Mladic and Mr Karadzic have been indicted for genocide over the killings in Srebrenica and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, which both claimed close to 20,000 lives. The Siege of Sarajevo alone was the longest siege of any major capital in the history of modern warfare, lasting from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996.
Gen Tolimir was an intelligence officer and senior aide to Gen Mladic at the time of the massacre at Srebrenica, which was carried out by Bosnian Serb soldiers under Gen Mladic’s command.
Gen Tolimir is accused of helping to plan and carry out the murders, which have since been internationally recognised as genocide.
With his arrest, only five of the 161 people indicted by the UN tribunal remain at large, including Gen Mladic and Mr Karadzic.
Gen Tolimir is thought to have been one of the key figures helping his former commander to evade capture.
If so, he may provide important information about where the most wanted war crimes suspect is now hiding, our correspondent says.
The European Union welcomed Tolimir’s arrest, describing it as “an important step towards bringing to justice all remaining fugitives.”
“Full cooperation with the (U.N. war crimes tribunal) is not only an international obligation, but also a key step to achieve lasting reconciliation in the Western Balkans region,” EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement.
Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the U.N. tribunal in The Hague welcomed the arrest of Tolimir and said she hoped the other two top fugitives, Mladic and former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic would be apprehended soon, the Serbian news agency Beta said.
According to the indictment, Tolimir was aware of the program aimed at expelling Muslims from Srebrenica and Zepa, and he willingly participated in the project. On July 9, 1995, when President Radovan Karadžic passed down an order to seize Srebrenica, the order was passed directly through Tolimir.
In Zepa, Tolimir told the Muslims that they must leave otherwise the Serbs of Bosnia would launch a military operation. The Bosnian Muslims refused to leave and, early on the morning of July 14, 1995, the command of the Bosnian Serbs launched an attack against the Zepa enclave.
Tolimir is being charged for acting in conjunction with other Bosnian Serb army and police officers in a joint criminal enterprise. He has been indicted for the forcible removal of women and children from the Srebrenica enclave, and the execution of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys in July 1995.
SREBRENICA MASSACRE SUSPECT TO BE TRIED IN BOSNIA
Prosecution Wants Srebrenica Suspect Tried in Bosnia
Related:
BUTCHER OF SREBRENICA WANTS HIS OWN ADMISSION KEPT SILENT
MAN TIED TO SREBRENICA MASSACRE WANTS HIS OWN ADMISSION KEPT OUT OF COURT
Related:
1. Elusive Justice: Marko Boskic, a man who gunned down 1,200 Srebrenica Bosniaks
2. Bush administration has no interest in prosecuting Srebrenica massacre suspects
3. Phoenix: Mecca for Srebrenica massacre fugitives
ELUSIVE JUSTICE: MARKO BOSKIC, A MAN WHO GUNNED DOWN 1,200 SREBRENICA BOSNIAKS
WAR CRIMINALS IN THE U.S.
But on an evening in mid-December, news from America made Hidic suddenly smile.
One of the eight men who lined up her two brothers and about 1,200 other Muslim boys and men in a field in Bosnia during its civil war more than 10 years ago and then shot them dead was in custody in Massachusetts, a Newsday reporter told her.
She smelled justice at last. The United States had Marko Boskic, one of the killers of the Srebrenica massacre, the worst war crime committed in Europe since the end of World War II.
“They should condemn him for the crime,” said Hidic, 33, sitting in the living room of the apartment she shares with her mother and daughter in a suburb of this still war-scarred city. Framed photographs of her murdered brothers sat on shelves. Her husband also is missing, presumed to be among the more than 7,000 murdered during the entire Srebrenica massacre. “It is already known [Boskic] was one of the ones killing.”
In December, Boskic was facing only immigration charges, but it was still possible the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts could file the much more serious charge of torture – a federal crime that carries the death penalty for acts of torture overseas that have led to death. But on Jan. 10, the U.S. attorney’s office filed a one-sentence status report in U.S. District Court in Boston, explaining that “it is not the government’s intention to seek a superseding indictment in this matter.”
When told in January that the United States did not intend to charge Boskic with any crime other than lying to immigration authorities – if convicted he is likely to be sentenced to time served and would face deportation proceedings – Hidic was at first silent on the telephone from Sarajevo.
Then she spoke. “That is outrageous. I have no words to express what I feel,” she said. “So he will be let go after he had killed so many people? Is that for real? Terrifying.”
Complicated road to justice
Since then, Bosnian prosecutors and U.S. federal authorities have begun discussing how to try Boskic in Bosnia. This week, a Department of Homeland Security agent traveled to Sarajevo to help the new Bosnian State Court for War Crimes prepare an extradition request. But officials warn such requests are complicated and not guaranteed to succeed in U.S. courts. The agent also looked at case files that might relate to suspects living in the United States, a source said.
And while Boskic may ultimately face justice in Bosnia, the Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute him thus far for torture means there is unlikely to be a precedent-setting case and therefore, some officials say, no deterrent message for other war criminals considering making America their home.
Drew Wade, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said his department “doesn’t comment on charging decisions in specific cases.”
Frustrating to many law enforcement officials and tragic to victims like Hidic, Boskic’s is a single example from hundreds of cases of suspected foreign war criminals, torturers and human rights abusers who have made the United States their home. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the successor to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, is litigating 779 such cases concerning suspects from more than 85 countries. Agents from ICE are investigating 264 cases.
War crimes investigators in the United States and other countries say the reality is that most of the thousands of mid- or low-level war criminals living overseas or in their home countries will escape justice due to a lack of political will and courts designed to prosecute people like Boskic.
When they find these people living in the United States, federal prosecutors and investigators essentially have two choices: Prosecute them for the potentially capital crime of torture, or charge them with lying during their immigration process and deport them as soon as they have served a relatively brief prison sentence.
Under U.S. law, deportees usually can choose to go to any country that will have them. Often, prosecutors can do little but hope the torturers and killers will face justice elsewhere.
The United States enacted a torture statute in 1994, but not a single case has been brought. Some investigators, prosecutors and human rights activists worry that while U.S. law does not give foreign torturers impunity, the fact that the torture statute has not been used has made the United States an attractive destination.
And some investigators and human rights advocates worry that the Justice Department, under Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez – author of a controversial White House memo that critics said effectively sanctioned the use of torture by American interrogators overseas – would never allow the statute’s use for fear it could be used on U.S. soldiers or intelligence agents.
The killing field of Branjevo
The first of the buses began arriving at Branjevo Military Farm in the village of Pilica just before 10 in the morning. It was July 16, 1995, and the morning was already baking hot.
Hungry, thirsty and terrified, the dozens of Muslim men in the bus wore civilian clothes. They were as young as 17 and as old as 70. This group was blindfolded and their hands were tied.
Among the soldiers, holding his automatic rifle and waiting in the early-morning heat, was Marko Boskic, according to testimony in a war crimes trial by another soldier.
Military police officers took the first 10 men from the bus, which was parked next to the four farm buildings, and led them to the nearby field. They lined them up in the grass, between a wooded area and a farm building, their backs to Boskic and his comrades. The two parallel lines, prisoners and executioners, were about 20 yards apart, according to two survivors and one of the executioners, all of whom have testified at war crimes trials at the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
The soldiers from the Bosnian Serb Army gunned down the 10 prisoners. Then 10 more. And then another 10.
The methodical, merciless killings continued until about 3 in the afternoon. By then, one end of the field was covered in up to 1,200 bodies. It was one of the key executions in the overall Srebrenica massacre, the worst single war crime in Europe since the demise of Nazi Germany.
Boskic’s participation is well chronicled.
Former comrade’s testimony implicates alleged killer
In 1996, Drazen Erdemovic, Boskic’s former comrade in the 10th Sabotage Detachment of the Bosnian Serb Army, testified in detail during his own trial at The Hague war crimes tribunal that he and Boskic were members of an eight-man squad who shot dead the unarmed Bosnian Muslim men who had been captured and bused to the farm north of Srebrenica.
Erdemovic also has testified in at least two other trials at The Hague about the killings at the Branjevo farm. In court on July 5, 1996, he was asked by prosecutor Mark Harmon about orders he had received from a senior officer concerning the Muslim prisoners arriving at the farm on buses.
“Did he say what you and the members of your unit were supposed to do regarding those Muslims from Srebrenica?” Harmon asked.
“Yes,” Erdemovic replied.
“What did he say?”
“That we have to execute those people.”
Soon after, Harmon asked: “Can you identify the other members of your unit who were present?”
“I can,” Erdemovic said, listing his comrades with their first names after their family names. The list included “Boskic, Marko.”
Erdemovic estimated later in his testimony that they had killed “somewhere about 1,000, 1,200, I do not know. I estimated the number according to the arrivals of the buses.”
On the night of his arrest, in 2004, Boskic told federal agents and an investigator from The Hague tribunal that, as an ethnic Croat, he had been held in a Serb concentration camp and that the only way to gain his freedom was to join the Serb army, according to an excerpt of a statement he gave to investigators that was released by his Boston attorney, Max Stern. Boskic told investigators he was forced by his commander, Milorad Pelemis, to serve on the execution squad, according to the section of the statement Stern released.
“I told Pelemis I do not want to do that,” Boskic said in the translated excerpt. ” He came up and put a pistol on [my] forehead and said that I have to, or I will be dead. Pelemis said to the commanders that in case someone refuses the duty task, they have the right to shoot him.”
Stern is trying to have the courts rule the statement as inadmissable evidence.
‘He was just like any other soldier’
In a telephone interview with Newsday from Belgrade, where he is now living, Pelemis, Boskic’s former commander in the 10th Sabotage Detachment, said Boskic was “a rather good soldier but was just like any other soldier. He wasn’t specialized in anything. He wasn’t a sniper or had any other special weapon except an ordinary Kalashnikov. He volunteered to go to combat, motivated by small monetary gains.”
Pelemis told Newsday he, personally, was not present during the Srebrenica massacre even though Erdemovic testified in detail about Pelemis’ presence, including an incident in which Pelemis ordered one of his soldiers to slit the throat of a Muslim man. According to Pelemis, Boskic was a violent man with an alcohol problem.
“I had problems with him outside of combat because he was inclined to drink,” Pelemis said.
In 1996, Boston Globe reporter Elizabeth Neuffer interviewed Boskic in a café in the Bosnian town of Bjieljina. When she asked why Boskic killed the men at Pilica, Boskic eventually replied: “Would you like to get whacked? I want you to forget this street and this restaurant. It doesn’t exist anymore for you. Don’t come looking for me anymore. I cannot guarantee the safety of your lives.”
Investigators credit Neuffer’s reporting for their initial awareness of Boskic, who by chance ended up living in Neuffer’s own city.
There is also video evidence of Boskic’s involvement with the 10th Sabotage Detachment. He and Pelemis both appear in a video of an awards ceremony celebrating the first anniversary of the unit, according to an affidavit written by senior special agent Gregory Nevano of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nevano, who investigated Boskic, writes that the prosecutor’s office in The Hague provided the video, dated Oct. 14, 1995 – three months after the massacre.
Also present at the ceremony, Nevano writes, is Bosnian Serb Gen. Radislav Krstic, whom The Hague tribunal has convicted of genocide for his involvement at Srebrenica. A cooperating witness who appears to be a soldier in Boskic’s unit but is not named in the affidavit identified himself, Boskic, Pelemis and Krstic, Nevano writes.
The American investigation into Boskic’s case began in 2003, and the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts privately saw it as a perfect way to begin using the torture statute, sources told Newsday. Many federal officials involved in pursuing foreign war criminals living in the United States shared a common belief: The case could have sent a crucial warning to other foreign war criminals. “That was one of the goals behind it,” a federal investigator said. “Part of the whole program is deterrence.”
A former Justice Department official with knowledge of the case told Newsday that the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts and investigators from Homeland Security wanted to file the unprecedented torture charges against Boskic, but that senior Justice officials told them the evidence against him was not sufficient to secure a conviction under the narrow terms of the torture law.
According to a Justice Department official familiar with the case, “The alleged charges in the Boskic case didn’t meet the elements of the statute at the time. The investigation continues as more evidence is collected.”
The Massachusetts office was very disappointed with the Justice decision, with officials in Boston believing they had enough evidence to secure a conviction, sources told Newsday. Crucial testimony in a trial, had it been approved, could have come from two survivors of the Branjevo farm massacre. The two men already have appeared as witnesses for the prosecution in Krstic’s trial in The Hague.
‘I could feel the hot blood pouring over me’
Not publicly identified, they described not just the killings but a scene of physical and mental torture. “When they opened fire, I threw myself on the ground,” testified a Muslim man known as Witness Q in the Krstic trial. “And one man fell on my head. I think that he was killed on the spot. And I could feel the hot blood pouring over me … I could hear one man crying for help. He was begging them to kill him. And they simply said, ‘Let him suffer. We’ll kill him later.'”
It is likely the two witnesses would testify against Boskic given their past cooperation and the close ties between the prosecutor’s office in The Hague and U.S. investigators, an official connected to the case said. Boskic’s apparent admission to investigators of his involvement in the massacre was considered another crucial piece of evidence, officials involved in the case said.
The department’s decision to seek no further charges – specifically torture – against Boskic means he will be tried for lying about what he did in Bosnia, but most likely not for the acts themselves, although his indictment on the immigration charges reads he “had, in fact, killed a person because of race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin or political opinion.”
Samantha Martin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston, told Newsday that the Jan. 10 status report does not preclude the possibility of further charges being brought against Boskic. The office declined to comment further on the case.
Difficult to prosecute
Prosecutors, investigators and legal experts agree it would be extremely hard to bring a precedent-setting torture case. First, there is no direct case law to work with. And given that prosecutors might have sought the death penalty in a case against Boskic, the standard of proof would have been very high, officials said.
In addition, the torture statute is written in a way that makes it hard to build a sufficiently strong case. The crime has to have been committed after the law’s passage in November 1994, putting the ’95 Srebrenica massacre within the time frame. But a prosecutor would have to prove not only that the defendant tortured someone, but that he or she had “specific intent” to cause physical or mental pain.
With possible torture charges now apparently unlikely, Boskic could be out of U.S. custody before long. He already has served almost 18 months in federal detention awaiting trial on the immigration charges. As an ethnic Croat, he may try to obtain Croatian citizenship, although U.S. officials consider it unlikely the Croatian government would welcome such a well-chronicled suspect. And even though he served in the Bosnian Serb Army, Serbia is unlikely to grant him citizenship because the 10th Sabotage Detachment has long been Serbia’s favorite scapegoat for the Srebrenica massacre because many of its soldiers were ethnic Croats and even Muslims.
What became of Boskic after the Srebrenica massacre is the story of an alleged killer who blended with the large numbers of victims of the wars in the former Yugoslavia who came to the United States as refugees. It is a common tactic for torturers and killers from numerous countries, said Claude Arnold, who heads the Human Rights Violators and Public Safety unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Homeland Security.
“A lot of refugees were allowed into the U.S. before a lot of records became available that allowed a good vetting of these people,” one U.S. official said. “Most of these people were already in the refugee flow coming over before evidence started to be compiled by the … [war crimes tribunal]. Now the U.S. government is engaged in tracking these people down after they’ve been in the country for several years. Many of them have been here long enough to have already obtained U.S. citizenship.”
Having entered the United States on April 26, 2000, after allegedly lying in writing and in person to immigration officials about his military service and participation in the murder of Muslims, Boskic settled in the northern suburbs of Boston. When he was arrested on Aug. 25, 2004, he was working as a tile-setter and living in his condominium in Peabody, Mass. Based on a tip, federal investigators in Boston had begun looking into his past and realized they had a well-chronicled Srebrenica killer living in their backyard.
On his refugee application form, according to special agent Nevano, Boskic wrote that he fled Bosnia because of his “refusal to join the army to fight in the war – I didn’t want to fight in an ethnic war against people I lived with.”
When in Boston, Boskic liked to socialize with other Bosnians, including many Muslims who had suffered at the hands of the Serb army, some at Srebrenica. The revelations about his past left many Boston-area Bosnian Muslims stunned – that the man they had drunk beer with and barbecued with had taken part in the slaughter of their families.
The massacre of the Srebrenica Muslims represented a failure by the international community as countries including the United States failed to endorse the use of significant NATO air strikes, now almost universally seen by historians as the only way the killings could have been prevented.
Last year, on the 10th anniversary of the massacre, British foreign secretary Jack Straw acknowledged the failure and apologized. “For it is to the shame of the international community that this evil took place under our noses and we did nothing like enough,” he said. “I bitterly regret this and I am deeply sorry for it.”
Some convictions, but other suspects still at large
In the aftermath of the massacre, The Hague tribunal has convicted six Bosnian Serb soldiers and officers of crimes committed at Srebrenica. Eight more are in pre-trial status and another ended yesterday when former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died in prison. Three suspects are at large, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his general, Ratko Mladic, alleged masterminds of the massacre.
But for the rest of the thousands who took part in the massacre, for the men who pulled the triggers, tortured the prisoners and filled the graves, there has been little to fear so far from any court – in The Hague, the United States or the former Yugoslavia. The Bosnian courts have not secured a single conviction in relation to the massacre.
Bosnia’s State Court, established in 2002 to handle war crimes trials and struggling with limited financial resources, recently indicted 11 Srebrenica suspects. Serbia’s war crimes court only now is trying its first suspects in a Srebrenica trial – partly a result of Serbia’s desire to improve relations with the European Union.
Among the families of the murdered, such minimal action provides little hope for justice. With thousands of boys and men still missing, the best hope for many is that their loved ones’ bodies will be found and given a proper burial.
Hidic’s brothers, Sead and Alija Durakovic, were soldiers in the predominantly Muslim Bosnian army and, as the Serbs pressed in on the 40,000 Muslims living in Srebrenica, the brothers fled in civilian clothes through the mountains around the safe area. No one in the family saw them alive again.
Last year, the phone rang in their tidy apartment that sits in a housing complex on the outskirts of town. It was an official from the Red Cross, which helps in the ongoing work to identify bodies of those found in mass graves around Srebrenica. Using a DNA sample from Hidic’s mother, investigators had identified two bodies found in a grave as being Sead’s and Alija’s. The man from the Red Cross told her they had been found near a place called Pilica.
On July 11 of last year, Hidic was among the families of more than 600 newly identified victims of the massacre to gather at the Srebrenica memorial and cemetery near the town.
Situated directly across the road from the car battery factory that was a United Nations military base and the place where Serb soldiers separated the men and boys from the women and children, the cemetery is a reminder of a mass murder whose killers have mostly escaped justice.
Row after row of simple green gravestones are marked with the names, hometowns and years of birth and death. The lives of the roughly 2,000 men and boys buried there all ended in 1995, the inscriptions show.
Bodies yet to be identified
There is plenty of room for the thousands of bodies yet to be found or identified. In nearby houses and towns, say war crimes investigators and Muslim survivors, live dozens – perhaps hundreds – of Serbs who took part in the massacre, living with little fear of arrest or prosecution. The unmissable, unavoidable, massive cemetery sits to jab at their consciences.
In the pouring rain on that July day last year, Hidic and her cousins laid to rest her two brothers alongside the other men and boys whose bodies have been identified.
Hidic’s husband, Sasa, is yet to be found.
“I had to go through that,” she said, referring to the ceremony and burial. Her mother did not go, unable to bear the pain. “There was no one else from the family to be there.”
BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS NO INTEREST IN PROSECUTING SREBRENICA MASSACRE SUSPECTS
BOSTON — Marko Boskic, accused of being one of eight gunmen who massacred 1,200 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, will not be charged under a special U.S. torture law.
The alleged Bosnian Serb Army war criminal — who was found living in Peabody, Mass. — will instead face charges that he lied on his immigration forms when he came to the United States as a refugee. If convicted, he would probably face a short sentence, followed by deportation, the Boston Globe reported.
Federal prosecutors and FBI agents had hoped to bring more serious charges against Boskic, which could have resulted in a life prison term or even a death sentence.
Some rights activists accused the Bush administration of not bringing charges against Boskic out of fear of setting a precedent that could hinder U.S. interrogators in the war on terrorism.
To win a conviction in a case such as Boskic’s, however, prosecutors would have to prove the defendant intentionally set out to make his victims suffer while executing them.
“Whatever he did, he was coerced into doing it,” said Max Stern, Boskic’s attorney. “They would have an impossible burden to prove the case.”
SERBIAN REPORTS: RATKO MLADIC CORNERED
Belgrade — War-crimes fugitive Gen. Ratko Mladic, accused of genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from the Bosnian war, has been located and authorities are negotiating his surrender, a top state security official said Tuesday.
Gen. Mladic was located but “he has yet not been arrested,” the official, who is close to the operation to locate Gen. Mladic, told the Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The state news agency Tanjug reported earlier Tuesday that Gen. Mladic was arrested in Belgrade and being taken to a U.S.-run air base for transport to the UN war-crimes tribunal.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman denied the Tanjug report that Gen. Mladic was arrested.
Srdjan Djuric, spokesman for Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, told the AP in a statement that Gen. Mladic had not been arrested. He called the report a “manipulation” to attempt to derail the government’s efforts to detain the wartime Bosnian Serb army commander, who has been on the run since the 1990s.
In Washington, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said Gen. Mladic “continues to be a fugitive from justice.” When asked if Gen. Mladic had been arrested or apprehended, Mr. Ereli replied that he was not aware of either’s occurring.
The conflicting reports caused confusion in Belgrade. There have been numerous incorrect reports in the past that Gen. Mladic was captured.
Gen. Mladic is wanted by the war-crimes tribunal on genocide charges related to Europe’s worst carnage since the Second World War – the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys (related link) from Srebrenica in 1995 – and for other crimes during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.
Serbia, seeking to establish closer ties with the European Union and NATO, faces renewed international isolation if it fails to extradite Gen. Mladic to the UN tribunal in The Hague.
European Union officials have warned that Serbia’s initial talks on joining the 25-nation bloc could be frozen unless he is handed over by the end of February.
Officials at the EU and NATO said they had no information about the reported arrest.
Earlier Tuesday, senior Kostunica aide Vladeta Jankovic predicted that Gen. Mladic would be captured “soon.”
“Those who are searching have all means and are in full swing” in efforts to capture Gen. Mladic, Mr. Jankovic said. He said the government wanted to persuade the general to surrender.
He said later Tuesday, however, that he had no information on whether Gen. Mladic’s hiding place had been located or whether the government was involved in any negotiations for his surrender.
Gen. Mladic, 62, is No. 2 on the tribunal’s most-wanted list after Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (related link), who remains at large.
Under an indictment last amended in October 2002, the UN war-crimes tribunal charged Gen. Mladic with 15 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in 1992-1996.
If tried and convicted, he faces life imprisonment, the tribunal’s maximum punishment. The UN court has no death penalty.
Related link: Ratko Mladic: $5,000,000.00 Reward
CROATIAN COURT JAILS SREBRENICA KILLER
ZAGREB (Reuters) – A Croatian Serb recognised in a harrowing war video was jailed for 15 years on Thursday for killing unarmed Bosnian Muslim [Bosniak] prisoners during the Srebrenica massacre, state news agency Hina reported.
A court in the Croatian capital found Slobodan Davidovic guilty of killing six prisoners after Bosnian Serb troops overran the Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia in July 1995.
Davidovic, 57, was arrested in June after he was identified in a home video filmed in 1995 that showed the prisoners being killed by a Serb paramilitary unit called the Scorpions.
“Testimonies and the video of the executions, in which Davidovic was recognised, clearly show that he and the others had taken part in killing the Muslims,” presiding judge Miroslav Sovanj said in explaining the verdict.
Sovanj said Davidovic had been “a mature and experienced man when he committed the crimes. After the war and his stint in the Scorpions, he returned home as if nothing had happened,” Hina quoted him as saying.
The Scorpions took part in the capture of Srebrenica and the killing of up to 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in 1995, in Europe’s worst single atrocity since World War Two.
Five of his fellow ex-Scorpions, seen on the same video, appeared before a Belgrade court on murder charges earlier this month. They were arrested after the video was broadcast on Serbian television in June.
The video shocked Serbia, which had previously denied knowledge of the Srebrenica massacre and the Serb involvement. The video showed camouflaged men, joking, smoking, torturing and then shooting unarmed young men in a clearing in the woods.
Davidovic, a Serb from the eastern Croatian city of Vukovar, was also found guilty of torturing Croatian soldiers in 1991 at the start of Croatia’s independence war against rebel Serbs backed by the Yugoslav army.
keywords: Srebrenica genocide, Srebrenica massacre, Srebrenica video, Srebrenica videotaped killings, Srebrenica video trial, Srebrenica, Bosnia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosniaks, Bosniacs, Bosnian Muslims
SERB SOLDIER GETS 15 YEARS IN SREBRENICA VIDEO KILLINGS
Serb soldier gets 15 years in videotaped Srebrenica killings
Judge says man showed no mercy in Muslims’ deaths
December 30, 2005
ZAGREB, Croatia — A Serbian soldier seen killing Muslims [Bosniaks] in a nationally televised video was convicted of war crimes Thursday and sentenced to 15 years in prison, with the judge saying he had shown “no mercy or compassion” for his victims.
Serbian paramilitary member Slobodan Davidovic “actively participated in inhuman treatment, humiliation and liquidation” of six young Muslim [Bosniak] men from Srebrenica in 1995, Zagreb district court Judge Miroslav Sovanj said in his ruling.
He was seen in the video — shown by prosecutors at the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and then broadcast across countries once part of now-defunct Yugoslavia — helping kill six young Bosnian Muslims [Bosniaks].
Four were shot one by one in the back. Two others were ordered to carry the bodies into a barn where they, too, were killed.
The images shown earlier this year shocked people in Serbia and Montenegro.
Many of those people were in denial about the actions of Serb troops who overran the enclave of Srebrenica and killed 8,000 Muslim [Bosniak] men and boys after separating them from women in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.
Davidovic, 52, also was convicted of torturing a Croat prisoner of war during the 1991 Serbo-Croat war.
He was arrested in eastern Croatia in June soon after the footage was shown.
Five others seen in the video were arrested in Serbia and are on trial there.
Davidovic, a Croatian citizen, joined the paramilitary group called during the 1992-95 war in neighboring Bosnia.
The judge rejected Davidovic’s claims that he was forced to attend the killings but did not take part in them.
Sovanj said Davidovic returned to his hometown in eastern Croatia after the slayings “as if nothing happened.”
keywords: Srebrenica genocide, Srebrenica massacre, Srebrenica video, Srebrenica videotaped killings, Srebrenica video trial, Srebrenica, Bosnia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosniaks, Bosniacs, Bosnian Muslims
Srebrenica Massacre 
