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TUCSON, Ariz. - Federal officials say a 50-year-old Arizona man has been sentenced to 70 months in prison, decades following his involvement in war crimes during conflicts in Southeastern Europe.
According to a statement released on the morning of Nov. 29, the man, identified as Sinisa Djurdjic, was found guilty in May of visa fraud and attempted unlawful procurement of citizenship.
An investigation into Djurdic, according to federal officials, began in 2009, nine years after he moved to Tucson under a U.S. refugee program.
"Homeland Security Investigations launched an investigation after receiving a roster of a Serbian police brigade suspected of various wartime atrocities during the 1990s. Djurdjic was listed as a member of the brigade," read a portion of the statement.
Officials said results from a multi-year international investigation, along with evidence presented during trial, showed that Djurdjic was indeed a member of the police brigade in question. They also show that Djurdjic was a prison guard at two separate prison camps that were established by a Bosnian-Serb military unit that espoused the idea of ethnic cleansing during a civil war in the area.
The prison camps, according to officials, were located near Sarajevo. Sarajevo is located in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which witnessed a civil war in the early 1990s that, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, resulted in the deaths of about 100,000 people, based on studies completed following the war's conclusion. Other sources, including the Associated Press, have listed a higher number of deaths.
"During the trial, five Bosnian Muslims who were held at the prison camps testified that, as a prison guard, Djurdjic tortured prisoners in his custody for months in 1992," read a portion of the statement. "At trial, extensive evidence demonstrated that Djurdjic obtained refugee status and permanent residence in the United States for two decades by lying about his prior military and police service."
This is not the first time a person who moved to the U.S. was found to have taken part in war crimes during the conflict in the Balkans. In 2012, ICE officials announced that a man who lived in Las Vegas was deported back to Bosnia and Herzegovina. That man, according to federal officials, was facing criminal charges in Bosnia and Herzegovina in connection with his role during a massacre that left thousands of Muslim Bosnian men and boys dead.
(This story was reported on from Phoenix)