US deports man accused of war crimes to Bosnia

A former Bosnian Serb police commander accused of playing a role in the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica has been deported to his native country, U.S. officials said Thursday. Dejan Radojkovic arrived in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, aboard a commercial airline after an overnight flight from Las Vegas accompanied by federal agents, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lori Haley said. Radojkovic\'s immigration lawyer in Las Vegas said he was surprised by the deportation. Don Chairez said he knows of no evidence linking the 61-year-old client he knew as a lawful permanent U.S. resident, widower, father of two and owner of a modest grocery business with the execution of Muslim boys and men in an event considered Europe\'s bloodiest mass killing since World War II. \"He is not a war criminal,\" the attorney told The Associated Press. \"There is no evidence that Mr. Radojkovic ever killed anybody.\" Chairez said Radojkovic\'s national guard unit accepted the surrender of about 200 Bosnian Muslim soldiers and turned them over to Bosnian Serb forces. Radojkovic didn\'t know the men would be killed, Chairez said. U.S. and Bosnian authorities said Radojkovic was handed over Thursday to police at the Sarajevo airport for prosecution based on evidence collected by investigators from the U.S. customs agency, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague and prosecutors from Bosnia-Herzegovina. \"He\'s wanted on genocide charges,\" said Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman in Washington, D.C. Authorities preparing for the trial of former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic on war crimes charges at The Hague, Netherlands, said this month the remains of almost 6,000 people had been exhumed from mass graves in the Srebrenica area. Estimates of the dead run as high as 8,000. \"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.\" The Immigration and Customs chief also pointed to the January 2010 deportation to Bosnia-Herzegovina of Nedjo Ikonic, a Milwaukee, Wis., resident identified as another former special police commander linked to the Srebrenica massacre. Ikonic was Radojkovic\'s police commander, Navas said. Morton promised to ensure the U.S. \"does not serve as a haven for human rights violators and others who have committed heinous acts.\" Mladic is standing trial before the military war tribunal on wider charges stemming from atrocities during a process dubbed \"ethnic cleansing.\" Bosnia\'s 1992-95 war following the breakup of the former Soviet republic of Yugoslavia left more than 100,000 dead. In Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb forces are blamed for overrunning a contingent of peacekeepers in July 1995 in a United Nations-designated \"safe area\" and executing Bosnian Muslim men and boys. Prosecutors allege Radojkovic commanded a special police brigade that rounded up about 200 Muslim men in the nearby Konjevic Polje region for execution, the ICE statement said. Court documents show Radojkovic and his family were granted refugee status and admitted to the United States in June 1999. The family lived in Las Vegas, where Radojkovic\'s wife, Radojka Radojkovic, died in a car crash in September 2000. A newspaper obituary said she was 43. Chairez said Radojkovic\'s daughter, Ranka Shaw, divorced and moved last year to Bosnia. A son, Ranko Radojkovic, lives in Las Vegas. Neither immediately responded to messages through Chairez. Radojkovic became a permanent U.S. resident in January 2002. Chairez said he used money from an insurance settlement following the crash to open a business that records show sold food, tobacco, sundries and videos. The business withered and licenses expired after Radojkovic was arrested in January 2009. ICE officials said a joint investigation by Bosnian authorities and U.S. Homeland Security agents linked him to possible war crimes. Court documents show he was accused of failing to report that he had been a squad commander in the Republika Srpska Special Police Squad. Chairez said Radojkovic, an ethnic Serb, had been a police dog trainer in Sarajevo before the breakup of Yugoslavia and was drafted by the Bosnian Serbian military after the war began. In the U.S., Radojkovic testified in Milwaukee against Ikonic, who Chairez said commanded three special police units, including Radojkovic\'s. Radojkovic remained in U.S. custody for more than three years. An immigration judge in late 2009 ordered him deported on multiple grounds, finding that he ordered or participated in \"extrajudicial killing.\" \"The government merely alleges that as an individual who was part of a group that accepted the surrender of these enemy soldiers, it is presumed that Radojkovic should have known that the Bosnian-Serbian military forces were likely to kill them,\" Chairez protested in an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The Muslim soldiers were loaded on buses and driven away, the lawyer said. \"There is no evidence and there is no allegation that Radojkovic shot and killed a single prisoner.\" The appeals court in February denied Chairez\'s appeal, clearing the way for Radojkovic\'s deportation.