Eurasia Press & News
Former Bosnian Croat fighter Zdenko Jakisa was arrested in the US state of Minnesota on suspicion of committing a series of violent crimes against civilians during the 1990s war.
The US Justice Department said that Jakisa, a former member of the wartime Croatian Defence Council, was arrested on Wednesday on immigration fraud charges for “failing to disclose multiple crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina and his military service during the armed conflict there in the 1990s”.
The Justice Department said that evidence given by witnesses in Bosnia indicated that Jakisa could have been involved in the murder of an elderly Bosnian Serb woman and the kidnapping, robbery and assault of a Bosnian Muslim man in September 1993.
It said that he had “committed immigration fraud by providing false and fraudulent information about his military service during the Bosnian conflict, his criminal record in Bosnia-Herzegovina and his commission of crimes of moral turpitude”.
Jakisa, who is 45 years old and was living in the city of Forest Lake in Minnesota at the time of his arrest, made an initial appearance on Wednesday in the US state’s district court and is scheduled for a detention hearing on Monday.
