Caught In South America

[Barry]

Why do so many war and crimes against humanity fugitives wind up in South America? Is it just very easy to slip in to those countries or are they welcome there?

Bosnian Serb Suspect Caught in Argentina
By BILL CORMIER
Associated Press Writer

August 8, 2005


BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A former Bosnia Serb paramilitary leader, wanted by a U.N. tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity, was captured Monday in Argentina, officials said.


Milan Lukic, who was indicted in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2000 in connection with a string of notorious killings dating to the Bosnian war, was awaiting initial questioning after his arrest here, authorities said.

Earlier this year, a Serbian court sentenced Lukic in absentia to 20 years in prison for his role in the abduction of 16 Muslims from a bus in eastern Serbia in 1992.

Lukic, as a reputed member of a notorious paramilitary group called the Avengers, allegedly took part in the abduction of 15 Muslim men and a woman who were later taken to Bosnia, tortured at a hotel, executed and their bodies dumped in the Drina River.

Argentine police did not provide details of the arrest, which was first disclosed by Serbian authorities after reports began circulating in Belgrade. Lukic had been missing since the late 1990s.

According to the U.N. war crimes indictment, Lukic in 1992 organized a group of paramilitaries who between May 1992 and October 1994 "committed, planned, instigated and ordered the executions" of Bosnian Muslims in the territory of Visegrad and elsewhere in Bosnian Serb-controlled territory.

In Bosnia, Bakira Hasecic, a survivor of atrocities in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad, described nursing a young Muslim girl she said had survived a rampage by Lukic and his men.

She said the paramilitaries rounded up 72 civilians, mostly women and children, and barricaded them into a house in the Visegrad suburb of Bikava before setting it ablaze.

The incident is described in the indictment by the U.N. court.

Hasecic, who heads Bosnia's Association of Women Victims of War told The Associated Press that only the girl she later nursed "survived, because she managed to escape through the bathroom window."

Lukic is the second former paramilitary detained in Argentina in months.

In June, Serbia requested the extradition of Nebojsa Minic, commander of the notorious former group known as "Lightning" that operated in the Serbian province of Kosovo during a 1998-99 war there,

Minic, who is suspected of killing 12 members of a Kosovo Albanian family in 1999, was arrested in May in the western Argentine city of Mendoza on charges of illegal entry and use of forged documents. Although he is sought for trial at home, Minic is not wanted by the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague.

Two other top Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitives, wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, remain at large.

In Belgrade, government minister Rasim Ljajic said Lukic would be sought for extradition directly to The Hague court.

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Associated Press reporters Dusan Stojanovic and Katarina Kratovac contributed to this report from Belgrade.

[Corlyss_D]

They pay handsomely for the priviledge of hiding out there. Plus there are large European descendant communities there into which they simply disappear.

[Ralph]

Cor is correct and add to her response that there is a long history of right-wing Catholic clerics actively aiding murderers and terrorists ("Odessa," the church's Grand Tour for fleeing Nazis had Argentina as one of the main last stops of its unique Underground Railroad.

And Peron's form of fascism had huge support, much of which still exists.

I don't think many Argentinians are especially friendly to Muslims but payoffs and tradition go a long way with securing bureaucratic aid or, at least, silence.