ROANOKE, Va., July 18 (UPI) -- A former Bosnian prison camp guard living in Virginia was told in court he faces extradition on war crimes charges.
A seven-page complaint, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Va., Tuesday, accused Almaz Nezirovic, 53, of torturing Serbian civilians sent to a prison camp in the 1991-2001 civil war in the former Yugoslavia.
The complaint mentions beatings of prisoners with rifles and batons, starvation and forcing prisoners to eat urine-soaked grass.
"In these and other ways, the fugitive participated in torturing and inflicting cruel, inhumane and humiliating treatment on multiple prisoners," it reads.
Nezirovic has been living quietly as a welder and soccer coach in Virginia for 15 years, the Roanoke Times reported Wednesday, but was charged in June 2011 with lying on an application for U.S. citizenship and making a false statement in a naturalization interview, claiming he had not participated in acts for which he could be criminally charged.
After the federal charges were filed, authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a nation carved from Yugoslavia after the civil war, decided to prosecute Nezirovic on war crimes and asked he be extradited, the newspaper said.
