US to strip alleged Bosnian war criminal’s citizenship

The US justice division has launched a civil authorized case towards a person accused of being a Bosnian conflict legal to revoke his citizenship.

Kemal Mrndzic didn’t disclose throughout his US immigration course of that he served as a guard at Bosnia’s infamous Celebici jail camp, the place atrocities had been dedicated, the division stated.

A UN war crimes tribunal discovered that individuals held within the camp through the Bosnian conflict had been killed, tortured, sexually assaulted, overwhelmed and subjected to merciless and inhuman therapy.

US President Donald Trump’s administration wouldn’t permit individuals who “persecute others” to “reap the advantages of refuge within the US”, justice division official Brett Shumate stated.

The assistant lawyer basic added that the authorized case confirmed the worth that the US authorities positioned on “the integrity of its naturalisation course of”.

Mrndzic was discovered responsible by a jury in October 2024 on a number of counts of legal fraud and misrepresentation in relation to his profitable utility for a US passport and naturalisation certificates.

He didn’t confide in immigration authorities the character and timing of his navy service, or that “he persecuted Bosnian-Serb inmates as a jail guard”, the justice division stated.

Mrndzic was sentenced in January 2025 to greater than 5 years in jail.

The Bosnian conflict adopted the break-up of the previous Yugoslavia within the early Nineteen Nineties and led to the Srebrenica bloodbath in July 1995.

Srebrenica, recognised by the UN as a genocide, turned referred to as Europe’s worst mass atrocity since World Conflict Two, after Bosnian-Serb forces systematically murdered greater than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim males and boys.

The Celebici jail camp was operated by Bosniak and Bosnian-Croat forces, who had been additionally liable for widespread killings in areas they managed.

Serbian chief Slobodan Milosevic was tried for conflict crimes and genocide, and the bloodbath led to the US-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement on 14 December 1995.