BERLIN (Reuters) – German federal police said on Thursday they had arrested a 55-year old former Yugoslavian man who was sentenced 23 years ago in Croatia for crimes against humanity but who never served his prison term.
In 1997, the man, now a U.S. citizen, was sentenced to 10 years behind bars for killing a civilian in 1993 during the war in Croatia when he was part of the army of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serb Krajina (RSK), said the police.
Since then the man, unnamed by German authorities for privacy reasons, has escaped justice.
He was arrested at Frankfurt airport on Monday, on his way from Chicago to Belgrade and is now being held, awaiting extradition to Croatia.
Croatia, now a member of the European Union, won its war for independence in 1995 after some four years of fighting with rebel Serbs who opposed Zagreb’s secession from Serbian-dominated federal Yugoslavia.
The Belgrade-backed nationalist Serbs had seized a third of Croatian territory, declared the RSK and expelled the local Croat population.
(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
