Las Vegas grocer accused of war crimes and deported

Las Vegas: A man accused of commanding a police squad that rounded up Bosnian Muslims for slaughter in 1995 fashioned a new life in Las Vegas as a modest grocery store owner before being arrested and deported to his native country, a lawyer and US officials said on Thursday.

Dejan Radojkovic arrived in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, after an overnight commercial airline flight from Las Vegas accompanied by federal agents, Bosnian authorities and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said.

Radojkovic's lawyer in Las Vegas, Don Chairez, denied any evidence links the 61-year-old man — a permanent US resident and father of two — with the execution of Muslim boys and men in an event considered Europe's bloodiest mass killing since the Second World War.

"He is not a war criminal," Chairez said. "There is no evidence that Mr Radojkovic ever killed anybody."

Prosecutors allege Radojkovic commanded a special police brigade that rounded up about 200 Muslim men in July 1995 in the Konjevic Polje region for execution, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement statement said.

Chairez said Radojkovic's national guard unit accepted the surrender of about 200 enemy soldiers and turned them over to Bosnian Serb forces. Chairez said Radojkovic didn't know the men would be killed.

Arrest

Radojkovic was arrested in January 2009 for failing to disclose his wartime history when he entered the US, said Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman in Washington, DC.

Documents identify him as an ethnic Serbian refugee. An immigration judge in late 2009 ordered him deported on multiple grounds, finding that he ordered or participated in "extrajudicial killing".

Court documents show Radojkovic was accused of failing to report that he had been a squad commander in the Republika Srpska Special Police Squad.

US and Bosnian authorities said Radojkovic was handed over on Thursday to police at the Sarajevo airport for prosecution based on evidence collected by investigators from the ICE Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Centre, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague and prosecutors from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

"He's wanted on genocide charges," Navas said.

"For the families who lost loved ones at Srebrenica, justice has been a long time coming," Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said in a statement announcing Radojkovic's deportation.

"But they can take consolation in the fact that those responsible for this tragedy are now being held accountable."