Kemal Mrndžić, who during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was a guard supervisor in the notorious Čelebići camp, was arrested in the USA and accused on several counts of fraud in obtaining refugee status and later US citizenship.
He was charged Wednesday with falsifying, concealing a material fact from the U.S. government by trick, scheme, or device; using a fraudulently obtained US passport; and possession and use of a fraudulently acquired social security card.
According to the lawsuit, Mrndzic served as a supervisor of guards at an infamous prison camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war.
The UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found that the guards in the Čelebići camp committed numerous murders, rapes and participated in torture and other forms of persecution of Serbian detainees in the camp.
Three of Mrdnzić’s fellow guards were convicted by the tribunal after a trial in The Hague where the survivors testified about the agonizing conditions in the prison camps. Prosecutors said that a number of survivors have since identified Mrndzic as being involved in beatings and other abuses committed in Celebici.
Prosecutors said that after the end of the war, Hague Tribunal investigators spoke with Mrndžić in Sarajevo and accused him of involvement in abuses in Čelebići.
“Mrndžić subsequently hatched a plan to escape the country by crossing the border with Croatia and allegedly registered as a refugee in the United States using a fictitious story,” prosecutors said in a statement.
It further states that he falsely claimed in his refugee claim and interview that he fled his home after being captured, interrogated and abused by Serbian forces, and that he could not return home for fear of future persecution. He was admitted to the US as a refugee in 1999 and finally became a naturalized US citizen in 2009, Klix.ba reports.
