U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deported a former Bosnian-Serb police commander wanted in his native country for genocide and atrocities against thousands of Bosnian Muslims, capping what ICE officials called a successful effort to investigate the case and remove him from the United States.
Dejan Radojkovic, 61, arrived in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on Thursday morning aboard a commercial aircraft. He was turned over immediately to law enforcement officials there.
The former Las Vegas resident faces criminal charges in Bosnia and Herzegovina for his role in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995 as Bosnian Serb forces overran a contingent of U.N. peacekeepers, driving tens of thousands of Bosnian-Muslim civilians from the Srebrenica “safe area” and executing more than 7,000 men and boys.
Authorities say Mr. Radojkovic used his position as a commander in the Special Police Brigade to help carry out the crimes. Specifically, prosecutors charge that Mr. Radojkovic and his platoon rounded up some 200 Bosnian-Muslim men in the Konjevic Polje region and transferred them elsewhere to be executed.
“For the families who lost loved ones at Srebrenica, justice has been a long time coming, but they can take consolation in the fact that those responsible for this tragedy are now being held accountable for their crimes,” ICE Director John Morton said in announcing the deportation.
Documents show that Mr. Radojkovic, a native of Bosnia and Herzegovina, entered the United States in 1999. After a joint investigation by ICE and Bosnian authorities linked him to possible war crimes, he was arrested at his Las Vegas residence in January 2009.
Ten months later, an immigration judge ordered him deported on multiple grounds, including a finding that he “ordered and/or otherwise participated in extrajudicial killing.” The removal order was upheld on appeal.
In seeking to establish Mr. Radojkovic´s role in the Srebrenica genocide, ICE worked closely with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague and the Prosecutor´s Office of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo.
Mr. Radojkovic is the second former special police commander linked to the massacre to be targeted by ICE. Nedjo Ikonic, who was living in Milwaukee, was deported Jan. 19, 2010.
Since fiscal 2004, ICE has arrested more than 200 people for human rights-related violations under various criminal or immigration statutes. During that period, it obtained deportation orders and physically removed more than 400 known or suspected human rights violators from the United States.
• Jerry Seper can be reached at jseper@washingtontimes.com.
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