Bosnia demands extradition of war criminal from Turkey

Bosnia formally asked Turkey to extradite a convicted war criminal, a court said Thursday, after the former general Sakib Mahmuljin fled the Balkan country following his trial.

“After an international arrest warrant was issued, the court of Bosnia-Herzegovina has sent an extradition request to Turkey,” the court told AFP.

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Mahmuljin, 70, was the former commander of the 3rd corps of the Bosnian army, composed mainly of local Muslims, and served during the country’s bloody civil war in the 1990s.

The general was sentenced last year to eight years in prison over the execution of more than 50 Bosnian Serb prisoners of war by troops under his command in Vozuca and Zavidovici in the northeast of the country.

Despite being convicted, Mahmuljin was released after his trial and did not report to prison to serve out his sentence.

Reports in local media said the general left Bosnia for alleged medical reasons.

Mahmuljin is one of the few top Bosnian Muslim army officials to be convicted for crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war that pitted Muslim, Croat and Serb communities against each other, leaving more than 100,000 dead.

The crimes were committed by the “El Moudjahid” unit attached to his corps, which was made up of hundreds of mainly foreign extremists from Africa, the Middle East and some Western countries, who joined forces with Bosnian Muslims.

Most of the foreign extremist fighters who enlisted in Bosnia’s conflict left after the war ended with a US-brokered peace deal in 1995.