Last week, a woman who was arrested in Kentucky. She was long wanted for war crimes in connection with Croat persecution of ethnic Serbs in the early 1990s. Here we have yet another example of the ways in which war rarely ever truly ends — its effects ripple out, decades after treaties and peace accords. An excerpt from the NYT article, “Dark Past in Balkan War Intrudes on New Life.”
…the woman known here as Issabell is identified in court papers as Azra Basic, and prosecutors in Bosnia allege that in 1992 she was part of a vicious brigade of Croatian Army soldiers that tortured and killed ethnic Serbs at three detention camps in the early years of the Bosnian war.
Victims and witnesses from the camps, quoted in court documents, say that while wearing a Croatian uniform, twin knives strapped to her belt and a boot, Ms. Basic carved crosses into prisoners’ foreheads. They accuse her of slitting one man’s throat and forcing others to drink from the dead man’s wound.
