US to strip alleged Bosnian war criminal of citizenship

The US justice department launched a civil legal case against a man accused of being a Bosnian war criminal to revoke his citizenship.

Kemal Mrndzic did not disclose during his US immigration process that he served as a guard at Bosnia’s notorious Celebici prison camp, where atrocities were committed, the department said.

A UN war crimes tribunal found that people held in the camp during the Bosnian war were killed, tortured, sexually assaulted, beaten and subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment.

US President Donald Trump’s administration would not allow people who “persecute others” to “reap the benefits of refuge in the US”, justice department official Brett Shumate said.

The assistant attorney general added that the legal case showed the value that the US government placed on “the integrity of its naturalisation process”.

Mrndzic was found guilty by a jury in October 2024 on several counts of criminal fraud and misrepresentation in relation to his successful application for a US passport and naturalisation certificate.

He failed to disclose to immigration authorities the nature and timing of his military service, or that “he persecuted Bosnian-Serb inmates as a prison guard”, the justice department said.

Mrndzic was sentenced in January 2025 to more than five years in prison.

The Bosnian war followed the break-up of Soviet Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and led to the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995.

Srebrenica, recognised by the UN as a genocide, became known as Europe’s worst mass atrocity since World War Two, after Bosnian-Serb forces systematically murdered more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys.

The Celebici prison camp was operated by Bosniak and Bosnian-Croat forces, who were also responsible for widespread killings in areas they controlled.

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

By BBC News